Wake Me Up
by TeeHeeHee2014
Summary: When Drew makes a wish, there's no turning back! "All right, you know what I'd like, Santa? Instead of just starting high school, what I'd really like is to be finishing it."
1. Today

OK Fixing this up a bit, I do that. This story is AU, many character will show up eventually, complete families are changed, the first 2 chapters are in thrid person and then it will go straight to first person. This is a coming of age story with a little bit of humor, romance, pairings you love and pairings you hate probably because I am sure when we get to that part of the story (did I mention this is kind of long?) I may get negative reviews but as far as I'm concerned negative feedback is still feedback, but hopefully it will be constructive. I do hope you enjoy this and will update quickly as possible. I' from Canada so this story is set in the states! Enjoy

The title has been changed to 'Wake Me Up' by Avicii for it makes more sense to the whole of the story. And I'm hoping to get more Reviews!

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_**"Today is the greatest, day I've ever known, can't live for tomorrow, tomorrow's much too long." ~Smashing Pumpkins**_

**1**

For Andrew Torres finding the men's room in the Epitome Mall was no more than a puzzle. It was getting there, through the holiday shoppers who, like his mother and sister, still hadn't finished their holiday shopping on December 23, 2010, that was the real challenge. Finally making his way through the crowd he found his destination along with the only place in the mall that was wholly devoid of life. Drew stepped up to the farthest left of the three urinals and was standing there, taking care of the business that had summoned him, when he heard the door bang open.

Etiquette required that he continue staring at the wall in front of him, although etiquette also required that this new visitor use the right-hand urinal rather than the one in the center. Apparently he hadn't heard that. Drew could sense him stepping up next to him, leaving them separated only by the shoulder-to-knee metal divider.

"Ho-ho-ho," The stranger chuckled, "so what are you wishing for this Christmas, young man?"

Drew glanced over. He was obviously the mall's Santa, on a break from posing for pictures with tiny tots with their eyes all aglow. "Santa," he acknowledged him with a grin as he returned his eyes to the front. He had no idea his red suit had a zipper in the front.

"Well?" his booming voice reverberated inside the tiled room. "There must be something you want!"  
"Can't think of anything," Drew was still grinning. Apparently the guy really enjoyed this role. Although probably they'd fire his ass if one of the customers caught him smoking in the men's room and complaining about some little girl who'd just gotten a little too excited all over his nice suit. Drew finished up and walked over to the sinks to wash his hands.

"So you've got everything you want in life already?" he asked, still with the loud voice. "Everything's perfect?" "Well, no," Drew said. "All right, you know what I'd like, Santa? Instead of just starting high school, what I'd really like is to be finishing it."

'That way, I could avoid all the assholes, the bullies, the jocks, the bitches, the sniping, the teasing, the gossiping, the backstabbing — instead of three and half more years of this crap, I'd be just about finished.' Drew thought to himself while trying to straighten his brown unruly hair to the side.

Degrassi Community School was not Drew's idea of a good time. Like any typical high school (Well at least in movies) There was a core of jocks (male and female), cheerleaders, and the generally cool; orbiting planets for band members, newspaper and yearbook types, comics, theatre freaks, and druggies, who were at least connected.

Then there were people like Drew, a bottom of the totem-pole freshman, whose orbits occasionally brought them uncomfortably close to the solar system but who generally preferred to stay out among the asteroid fields. He was currently on one of his forays to the center, where he seemed to have been appointed the target-of-the-month by the freshman and sophomore football players and their tart-tongued girlfriends. The juniors and seniors, thank God, thought him so far beneath them as to not even be worthy of attention

It didn't help, actually, having an older brother who was one of those seniors, bound for Arizona State next year on a football scholarship. The gym coach was constantly expecting Drew to show even a fraction of his brother's athletic ability; the teachers were constantly expecting Drew to be as much a goof-off as he was; and the girls, even in his own grade, were constantly comparing his six-foot-two, 220-pound frame to Drew's. At five-foot-seven and 140 pounds, Drew was constantly disappointing them.

"That's a pretty tall order, young man," Santa laughed as he joined him at the sinks. "So basically you just want to skip all this annoying adolescence and go straight on into adulthood, huh?" 'Was Santa Claus mocking me?' He thought as he looked at him in the mirror, but he still wore the same jolly expression, even on his breaks.

"I was more mature at six than most of the guys in his high school will be when they're thirty-six," Drew said. "Maybe so," he laughed again as Drew dried his hands and pulled open the door. "Have a Merry Christmas, young man!" "Yeah, you too," He mumbled as he let the door close behind him.

Drew made his way back to where he was supposed to meet his Mom and sister Imogen, noticing along the way that Santa Claus was already back at his station, making yet another kid smile as he bounced her on his knee. Probably knew some sort of mall shortcut.

His pissy mood evaporated as soon as he saw them standing there, two women for whom the Christmas season seemed to have been designed. They were comparing what they bought, Mom a present for a new family in our community with a newborn baby, and Imogen a couple of presents for two new girls in her circle of friends in the eighth grade.

"All set, Andrew?" Mom asked. "Sure you don't want to get anything while we're here? You have presents for everybody?"

"I think so," I said, pretending to go over the list again. "Dad," — that would be a set of offset screwdrivers — "you," — a bathrobe he'd actually picked out last summer — "Jay," — a copy of the new Madden Football game — "and Maya" - a pair of earrings for his fashion-conscious seventh-grade sister. "That's everyone!" he grinned.

"Jerk," Imogen smiled at him. "Oh, and Imogen," he said. "I must have gotten a present for Imogen. Still, too late now, huh?" "Jerk!" Imogen smiled again slightly hitting him with one of her bags.

Drew had spent the most time picking that one out, a sweater that perfectly complemented her brown eyes. He would tell her that, two mornings from now, and she would ask how anything could complement eyes hidden behind glasses as thick as hers, and he'd kid her that her boyfriends would notice, and she'd ask which boyfriend, the older college-age one or the younger high school one. Then they'd both laugh. Neither Imogen nor Drew was ever going to be among the school's beautiful people. Unlike Jay, for instance, the jock of jocks, who seemed to have a different girl every week, or Maya, who was already reveling in the attention she was attracting from high school guys, to the point where she wouldn't even consider dating an eighth-grader, let alone a guy from her own grade.

Imogen and Drew were different.

Imogen would start dating when she found a boy smart enough to look beneath her shy quirkiness. And maybe when she got a different pair of glasses; it wasn't so much that they were thick as that the frame did nothing to hide that fact. And, in truth, she could use a little bit more developing, just like Drew could. Just like he got compared to Jay, she got compared to Maya, about an inch and a cup size to Imogen's detriment. She was constantly getting teased about her "little" sister, and the stuff Drew heard when she wasn't around was even cattier. But he loved his sister, and he knew that, even if she kept the same glasses and the same bust, someday she'd find a guy who thought as highly of her as I did.

Drew would start dating when he found a girl like Imogen.

"So what are you doing tonight?" Imogen turned around from the front seat of Mom's car to ask him. "Why?" He rolled his eyes. "Clare's coming over," she shrugged. "I just thought —" "I'm busy," he said. "Oh, stop it," she laughed. "Clare's nice." Drew held up his hands, "I never said she wasn't," he protested. "But I don't know, chubby little metal-mouth Clare Edwards and me? Can you see that?"

"I think you two would be a very cute couple," Mom piped in from her seat. "Don't you have driving to do?" he pointed ahead for her. "Stop signs, lights, all that?" "She's not chubby anymore," Imogen protested. "And she gets her braces off next summer." "Yeah, I know," he said. "But she seems so, I dunno, desperate."

"She likes you," Imogen objected. "Who knows why?" "So what are you doing tonight?" he asked her after a suitable pause. Imogen smiled, he couldn't fool her. "We're gonna listen to some tunes and then walk around the neighborhood and look at the Christmas lights," she said. "You wanna join us?" "Wouldn't that make either you or me the third wheel?" I asked. "Yeah, one of us," she admitted with a smile. "But you know how much I like helping you out." "Helping me out?" he raised his eyebrows. "You mean helping Clare out." "Next fall, Clare's gonna have to beat the guys off with a stick," Imogen pointed out. "She doesn't need his help."

It was true. Drew left them alone for the music portion of the evening, but allowed himself to be coaxed outside for the walk. Once there, Clare's gloved hand had shyly made its way into his as they strolled beside Imogen and listened to her commentary on which of their neighbors had committed serious Christmas decorating errors and which had gotten it right.

When we they were back in the house, after Clare had discarded the scarf and wool hat she'd been wearing, Drew was struck by the suddenly clear vision of how pretty she was, in fact, going to be next year, she glanced at him for a moment and blushed. Drew didn't notice though he was entranced by her eyes. He knew if he waited until next fall he wouldn't get close enough to be hit with the stick.

So later that evening, while Imogen was making hot chocolate for the three of them in the kitchen, Drew sat with next to Clare on the back patio and made inane small talk. 'What was I doing for Christmas?' 'Oh, nothing special.' 'What was she doing for Christmas?' She was leaving tomorrow with her family for Medford, where her grandparents lived. Clare looked up at the stars, "Do you like stars?" Drew smirked looking up himself "I like looking at them." Then he looked back at her, she smiled shyly.

Finally, as Drew heard the teakettle start to make noise he knew Imogen was pouring the milk into the mugs, he tentatively leaned in for his first kiss. "Finally," Clare agreed in a sigh as she pressed her mouth against his, her soft lips self-consciously pressing out to make sure that he couldn't feel her braces with his own lips. "Hot chocolate's done," Imogen announced from the kitchen, giving them a full five seconds to disengage before she bustled outside with the three mugs. "So?" she asked. "True love yet?" Drew blushed, while Imogen and Clare burst into giggles.

Later that evening, while Imogen made a big production of washing out the mugs in the kitchen and carefully drying them, Clare and Drew shared two more kisses, and agreed that it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing if they ran into each other when she returned in the New Year.

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"So, did you and Clare have a nice time last night?" Mom asked innocently at breakfast the next morning. "Yeah," Drew grunted. "Sure." "And did you have a nice time with Clare after she went home?" Imogen whispered when Mom was out of earshot. "What are you talking about?" he could feel himself blushing. "Squeak, squeak, squeak," she whispered. Drew felt his cheeks burning as he tried to find something — anything — in his cereal bowl that was worthy of intensive study.

"Don't worry," Imogen said, "she did it, too." he looked up in astonishment. "How do you know?" he whispered. "She called me last night," Imogen smiled. Drew was finally able to close his mouth. "And, um, she didn't tell you that sort of, um, in confidence?" he asked. "And, um, she asked me, um, to tell you," Imogen mocked him with a big grin.

They spent the rest of the day cleaning the house, one of Mom's bugaboos. Jay helped by staying out of the way, while Imogen and Drew, and to a lesser extent Maya, dusted the cabinets, vacuumed the floors, and cleaned the kitchen counters. When Santa Claus came to the Torres house tonight, he was going to find it spotless.

Drew's day got a little bit better late in the afternoon when they got their report cards. At dinner that evening, the family's traditional Christmas Eve roast, Mom made a big deal about Drew's across-the-board A-pluses. His father grunted his approval, but he was far more interested in re-running the film of the state championship football game two weekends ago that Degrassi had come within a field goal of winning thanks to his brother's 300 yards passing. While he and Jay watched the tape, the rest of them would be spending Christmas Eve decorating the tree, and then attending the 10 p.m. service at their church.

"I don't know," Mom teased me by cupping her hand to her ear after Dad and Jay left the dinner table. "I think I hear NYU calling." "Mom," he reddened.

Drew's Uncle Derek married to Mom's sister Stephanie, was a tenured professor of history at the New York University, and he described it in such glowing terms that even though it couldn't possibly all be true, he'd never lost his dream of going there one day. 'And Mom's right, these grades wouldn't hurt.' He thought to himself. The odd part was that he hadn't given a lot of conscious thought to them last semester. Instead, once his teachers had gotten past the 'me-as-Jay's-brother' thing, they'd turned out to be a pretty good bunch. His English teacher in particular, Mrs. Dawes, was amazing. She had led these discussions of Charles Dickens that even had some of the druggies participating. So to the extent he got good grades, it was because he'd actually enjoyed doing the work.

"Calling all geeks, calling all geeks," Maya interrupted Drew from his reverie. He stuck his tongue out at her. She was capable of being a good student herself, and she'd actually done well last semester: three B's, an A-minus, and an A. Imogen had just missed straight A's with a single B-plus. Jay? Well, it was a good thing it was an athletic scholarship, not an academic one. Still, he wasn't in any danger of not being able to play when he got there.

Drew went to bed that evening just before midnight, with the lights of the tree still illuminating the stairs leading up from the living room. He lay there for a while, his hands behind his head, thinking that maybe he'd been a little hasty the day before in the men's room at the mall. Really, if Clare Edwards was going to be around, if the teachers were actually bringing this kind of work out of him, then high school might not be that bad.

Drew woke up at 3:00am, with a desperate need to visit the bathroom. He had no sooner gotten out of bed than he tripped on something lying on the floor. Swearing quietly, he pulled himself up and quietly walked down the hallway to the bathroom he shared with Jay. After he was finished, he washed his hands in the bathroom sink. Then, with just the barest of glances at his reflection in the mirror over the sink, he jumped back and flipped off the light. He flipped it right back on again and stared at the mirror.

Holy shit! He had no idea who he was looking at.

Drew was on the verge of a freak-out, he waved to himself in the mirror not believing his eyes, it was his blue eyes, same brown hair only now cut shorter. Whose ripped pecks were those? Whose muscled arms were those? And, just as a matter of general information, whose five-foot-eleven inch body was that?

He continued to stand there for another five minutes, raising his arms to make sure that the mirror was reflecting properly, and then touching his face, his arms, and his chest to see if they would disappear. Drew was fully awake now and eventually forced himself back into the hallway, still lit with a faint glow from the tree downstairs. He flipped on the light in his room, hoping that somewhere inside was a clue to his startling transformation.

If there was, it certainly wasn't going to be easy to find it. His room was a pigsty. What he had tripped on when he'd gotten up was a pile of clothes that easily topped the mattress on the bed. Other than that, he appeared to have gotten extremely lucky not to have tripped on the baseball between the bed and the door, not to mention the pens that littered the floor, lying among a set of notebooks.

Drew made his way over to his desk, uncluttered with anything that looked like schoolwork, and pulled out the chair. He sat down and looked around. There were clues everywhere now. It's just that he had no idea what they meant. There were all sorts of newspaper clippings pasted to the mirror that hung above his desk. According to the headlines, the Degrassi Community School baseball team appeared to have had a phenomenal year. Drew didn't even know Degrassi had a baseball team.

On the shelf directly below the mirror was a picture of a Degrassi baseball team, with the two guys in front, who looked like Johnny DiMarco and Derek Haig holding up a large trophy. They were two sophomore jerks who were also on the football team, and who'd been among his tormenters this past week. Drew was in the picture as well, in his new body, he was standing in the back with an arrogant grin on his face, holding up a much smaller trophy. That trophy, he suddenly realized, was also sitting on the shelf. A baseball player perched atop it, and according to the inscription on the plaque, it had been awarded to "Andrew Torres, MVP — State AAA Tournament, 2013."

He stared at it in disbelief. It was 2013? What had happened to 2011 and 2012? Had he been asleep? Well, no, apparently he'd been playing baseball. Wait, he's a senior, his conversation with the mall Santa. What the hell? Drew fired up the computer sitting on the desk; fortunately it was the one thing in the room, along with the bed and the desk itself, that didn't appear to have changed. He jumped when he opened his browser, and discovered that his home page was now a pornography site. All of his bookmarks, in fact, were porno sites. He finally had to type in the URL for Google to get something that looked familiar.

From there, He found out that it was, in fact, 2013. Barack Obama was still President, the economy was still a wreck, and politicians on both sides were still fighting over something or another, but it seemed people cared more about celebrities and gossip, nothing new there. Drew typed his own name into Google and he came up, finding all of the articles in the local newspaper about the baseball team. Among them were articles that discussed the terrific recruiting war between Giants and Diamond Backs for his services, which appeared to include a 95 mile per hour fastball and a devastating change up. And the Yankees and the Red Sox were interested as well, since baseball prospects could get drafted straight out of high school. 'Wow. No wonder I looked arrogant.' He thought.

Then he found the brief article that broke his heart, dated June 26, 2012.

_Audra May Torres, Community Activist_

_Audra May Torres died this past Tuesday of cancer at Mercy Hospital. She was 40. Mrs. Torres was a noted community activist. Among her causes was the successful 2006 fight to establish what is now known as Sunrise Hill's Park, built on a site that the city had been touting for development as a chemical processing plant. She was a member of the Vestry of the St. James Episcopal Church, and had served as the Vestry's Senior Warden in 2006-2007._

Survivors include her husband, Omar Torres, and her children, Jason, Andrew, Imogen, and Maya, all of DeGrassi, OR.

Drew was in tears when he finished reading, he couldn't believe it, didn't k


	2. Somebody

Ok this chapter is long, it is in Drews point of view which this story will be here on out, it is very possible for there to be errors. I hope you enjoy and please review. once again this story is completely AU, as in Alternate Universe, and here we get to see how his family is!

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_**"Now you're just somebody that I used to know" ~Goyte**_

**2**

**Drew**

I opened my eyes very slowly, thinking — hoping — that perhaps I'd just had a very bad dream last night, a dream in which my mind, but not my body, had skipped three years of high school. Even with them half open, though, I knew that it had all been real. The room was just as messy as it had been when I had stumbled over the pile of dirty clothing. The newspaper articles about my baseball prowess were still attached to the mirror above my desk. And, I knew deep inside, my mother was still dead.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, telling myself that it's not like I could have done anything to help her. And I'm sure I said goodbye to her; somebody must have been operating this body for the last three years and he couldn't possibly have been that big a jerk not to have said goodbye to Mom before she died. It just wasn't me. I'd apparently gone through all of the stages of grieving already, and now I was going to have to do it again.

I looked over at the clock: 9:24. It was, I suddenly remembered, Christmas morning. I needed to at least show up. I found a relatively clean pair of jeans on the floor, and a nice-looking flannel shirt hanging in my closet that appeared to have never been worn. I pocketed the pile of stuff on my bedside table — a wallet, a pocketknife, a couple of quarters, and a set of keys — and with a last look in the mirror (so far, this body was the only good thing about this whole nightmare) I headed downstairs.

I paused at the doorway to the living room, comparing the scene to the one I had left the night before. The furniture was completely unchanged. Same couch, same chairs, same lamps, same rug. The only thing that had changed was one of the pictures on the far wall. Mom had hung a painting of the church we attended, a 150-year-old building nestled among the oaks and maples that deserved the description it was always given — quaint. The new picture was a photograph; from my vantage in the doorway it appeared to be two people on a beach.

The Christmas tree was in the same place as always, although it didn't seem as "happy" as it usually did. It took me a minute to figure out why; no tinsel. Mom was always a big tinsel person, and I'd spent last night gleefully, but tastefully, helping her put it on the tree.

The three - three? - girls sitting around the living room didn't look all that happy either. The closest to me was Imogen, sitting on the couch in a pair of jeans and a sweater as she neatly sliced the tape on the back of a wrapped present with a thumbnail. I smiled as I recognized the sweater I'd bought for her, the one I had intended to give her this morning. Back when this morning was still in 2010. I choked up a little, thinking that I would never now know whether I had told her how well I thought it was going to go with her eyes.

It was a little tighter than I thought it would be, meaning that I'd screwed up the size, or, more likely, that she'd finally undergone that growth spurt she'd been wishing for. Well, good for her. She was cutting her hair a little shorter, too, in a way that framed her face much better, and adding a few highlights to her brown hair. She was actually a very attractive young woman now, even if she did still have the same thick lenses in the same unattractive glasses.

Sitting at the other end of the couch was Maya, and my God, what a fox she'd become. If this was 2013, she would still only be 15 years old. Fifteen going on twenty-five, it looked like. Her lustrous blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail, emphasizing her perfect cheekbones and her lively blue eyes. Her somewhat over-mascaraed lively blue eyes, to my way of thinking. She was dressed in a bathrobe that had fallen open as she propped her long, tanned legs on the coffee table to paint her toenails with a bottle of polish the color of blood.

I had no idea who the third girl was. She was sitting in one of the wing chairs her legs stretched open in front of her on an ottoman. She looked to be about 24 or 25. I always had a hard time guessing women's ages, though, so she could be anywhere from 20 to 30. She looked to be about five months pregnant, although again, she could be anywhere from four to six months as far as I knew. She wasn't an unattractive woman, either, with dirty blonde hair that hung down to her almost exposed breasts. She was wearing a short, nearly nonexistent nightie that did little to hide much of anything, particularly with her legs splayed out like that. Jay's wife, maybe? He'd never been the smartest guy when it came to protection, but this girl looked a little older than the standard-issue coed he would have run into at ASU.

Maya suddenly realized I was standing there, and broke into a grin. "Hey, bro," she said, "thanks for the gift card. Victoria's Secret. Be nice to buy something there myself."

"For a change," Imogen muttered as she looked up, too. "Yeah, thanks." Evidently, I'd bought her the same thing, although with somewhat less success. She picked it up off the coffee table along with a small pile of other gifts that she'd finished unwrapping.

"How come I didn't get one?" the pregnant blonde pouted. "Maybe because you don't have any secrets," Maya sniped at her, casting a disdainful look at her exposed panties. "Maya," the blonde warned her, "do you want me to tell your father we're not getting along again?" "No, stepmother dear," Maya's voice dripped with sarcasm. "I'm so sorry."

Stepmother? Whoa. This was my stepmother? I leaned back against the door jamb as I processed this information. Dad had remarried? And since she was five months pregnant, and Mom had died 18 months ago, he sure hadn't waited very long, the son of a bitch.

Imogen had finished gathering her stuff, and moved toward the doorway I was standing in. She stopped suddenly, and eyed me with suspicion. "I thought you hated that shirt," she said. "No, why would you think that?" "'Cause I've never seen you wear it before," she answered me, as if I'd done something wrong by not wearing it, and was doing something equally wrong now by having put it on. "No, it's great," I assured her. "Matches my eyes, don't you think?" "Of course I think it matches your eyes," she nearly took my head off. "That's why I bought it for you last year." Without even the hint of a smile, she pushed past me and stomped up the stairs to her room.

"We saved your presents," Maya said, pointing to a pile of gifts sitting on the couch between her and the seat Imogen had occupied. I sat down in the space Imogen had warmed for me. "Where are Jay and Dad?" I asked as I glanced at the card on the first gift, from Maya.

"Your father, uh, didn't get enough sleep last night," my stepmother giggled as Maya rolled her eyebrows. "He'll be down soon. Jay had to go in to open up the Seven-Eleven because my manager called in sick."

Maya's gift proved to be a very nice-looking cellular phone. "This is awfully expensive, Maya," I said, "but thank you." "You're welcome," she favored me with a well-practiced, but nonetheless glowing, smile. "And I actually got it free, sort of. It comes with instructions for transferring all your numbers from your old phone on it, has to do with GMail."

"Sort of free?" I asked. "Well," she giggled, "he did get to take me to dinner."

I narrowed my eyes.

"Oh, fuck you," she grinned and threw a pillow at me. "Who are you to talk?"

Who was I? That was turning out to be a very good question.

"Anyway, thank you," I said, leaning across the couch to kiss her on the check and sitting back with another gift in my hands, one from "Dad and Mom (Paige)." Paige. That figured. It was an empty picture frame, with a gold inset inscribed "Degrassi High School — 2013 State Champions." "It's for that picture you have in your room," Paige bubbled. "We can hang it on the wall now. Your father picked it out." _For me or for him?_ I couldn't help but think.

"Thank you," I smiled at Paige. "Where's my kiss?" she pouted.

I stood up and walked over to her chair. She planted her feet on the ground and pushed herself up a little, and I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. She threw her arms around my neck, and I was only barely able to brace my arms against the arms of the chair to keep her from dragging me down on top of her.

"Thank you," I murmured. "I wish this was our baby," she wmypered into my ear.

She let go, and I turned and tripped over the ottoman, somersaulting onto the rug. "Our" baby? How could "we" have a baby? Oh my God, I was doing my stepmother. Not only had I managed to misplace my virginity in the last three years, but I'd apparently buried my self-respect along with it. Oh my fucking God.

"Are you okay?" Maya asked when I hadn't gotten up after a minute or two on the ground. "Yeah, sorry," I said, pushing myself onto my elbows. "I just hit my head." "Didn't hurt the golden arm, did we?" she arched her eyebrows, her voice taking on the slightest mocking quality. "Which one is that?" I asked in all innocence.

She just clucked her tongue in disgust and returned to her nails. I returned to the couch, and opened a hastily-wrapped magazine from Jay, with a card telling me I'd be receiving Sports Illustrated for the next year. "That's very nice," I said absently as I replaced it on the coffee table. "It's a big sacrifice for Jay," Paige assured me. I looked over at her. A subscription?

"He doesn't make that much at the Seven-Eleven," she seemed eager to press my case, "and it's hard for him to even think about sports after my injury." "Oh, yeah," I agreed. "I hadn't thought about it that way, uh, Paige. Thanks for reminding me."

Maya was rolling her eyes again.

The final gift I unwrapped was from Imogen, a wool winter hat, mostly blue, with little white baseballs in it. It was just so - so Imogen. I imagine I was grinning stupidly as I put it on. "What do you think?" I asked Maya and Paige. "Yeah, the girls will flock to that," Maya said. "You know, I just can't understand knitting," Paige was shaking her head.

"Imogen knitted this?" he asked. "Herself?" "You don't think anybody would sell those, do you?" Maya apparently found it hard to make comments that didn't include sarcasm. "Maya," Paige used her stepmother warning voice again before turning back to Drew. "She did work on it for most of the last two months."

"Well, I like it," I said. "Hey, it comes with a matching scarf."

I put that on, too.

Dad wandered in just then, dressed in a bathrobe and a pair of fuzzy slippers that had obvious been a gift from Paige at some point. My father was 45 years old now, and he wasn't a fuzzy slipper kind of guy.

"You look like a dork," he muttered on my way past me as he leaned over to give Paige, the son of a bitch's pregnant wife, a long kiss on the lips. As they were kissing, she looked over to make sure that Maya was still intent on her painting, and then gave me a big wink.

Oh my fucking God.

"I need some coffee," Dad grunted as pushed himself off the chair. "Where's Jay?" "Seven-Eleven," Paige said. "Manager's sick." "Assistant manager at a fuckin' Seven-Eleven," Dad shook my head as he made my way into the kitchen. "You want some coffee, Drew?" Maya and Paige both looked over at me. "Uh, yeah, sure Dad, thanks," I yelled back.

He came back with the coffee, and Maya and I watched him and Paige open up their gifts. Mine was apparently a gift card to a steakhouse. Had I gotten everybody a gift card? I must have shopped for a whole fifteen minutes one day. Dad grunted my thanks while Paige called me over for another kiss, this one blessedly uneventful.

My mother had loved Christmas, and I found myself unwilling to let go of what little holiday spirit we had going by heading back to my room. So I grabbed the copy of Sports Illustrated that came with the subscription acknowledgement and started to flip through it. Maya had finished painting and was now in the drying stage. Dad and Paige were sitting on the floor, murmuring to each other. Dad put his hand and then hi ear on Paige's stomach while she cooed about feeling the baby kicking.

"So can you take me to Uncle Damon and Aunt Daphne's now?" came a voice from my left. We all looked up to see Imogen in the doorway, looking eagerly at Dad for an answer to her question. "Hey, sorry, doll," Dad shook my head. "I gotta spend the afternoon changing the timing belt in my car, and Paige's car is still in the shop from hittin' the deer."

"The deer hit me," Paige protested with a sulk. "Yeah," Dad chuckled, "but he hit you smack dab in the middle of the hood, and it's gonna be another week 'til they get in all the parts. Christmas, you know." "But you said you'd take me," Imogen protested, clearly struggling to keep a stiff lip. "Nothin' I can do about the timing belt that quickly," Dad told her, still sitting on my butt on the floor. "You know, if you hadn't failed the driver's test twice, I'd have bought you your own car by now."

He returned my focus to my wife, Maya returned hers to her toes, and I watched Imogen as her face fell and her shoulders slumped. She turned and started to walk slowly back upstairs. I suddenly remembered the keys in my pocket and pulled them out. One was labeled as a Subaru key, so it might very well be that I owned a car.

"Hey, Imo," I shouted after her, "I can give you a ride." I looked up the stairs, to where Imogen's butt was about to vanish into the ceiling. The butt slowly turned in place, and the girl ascending turned into a girl descending. Still not a happy girl, though.

"Why?" she said when she reached the third step, the first step at which she was able to finally look at me. "I dunno," I shrugged my shoulders. "To say 'thanks' for the hat and scarf?" She blinked at me a few times. Apparently, she hadn't noticed I was wearing them before now. That was probably because she hadn't even given me as much as a glance when she came back downstairs to ask Dad about the ride.

"Um, okay," she agreed. "When can we leave?" "Whenever," I held out my hands. "My plans for the day was kind of gonna start and stop with laundry." "Yeah, I could use some laundry, too," Dad chimed in. "What about it, Paige?" "I still got a couple of clean pairs of panties," Paige adopted a sullen expression. "And it's Christmas. I'll do it tomorrow." Dad grunted my assent.

"Let's go now," I said, suddenly wanting nothing more than to get out of this house. "Grab my coat, would ya?"

That last line was a sudden inspiration, and it would solve one of the three immediate problems I had, namely, which coat was mine? Unfortunately, that was the most minor of the three. The other two, how you got to Uncle Damon and Aunt Daphne's, and how you drove a car, were going to be a little more problematic.

As it turned out, though, they were easily solved by the same method. As we walked out of the house — me wearing a very nice leather bomber jacket, along with the scarf and hat — I followed Imogen toward a fancy silver Subaru. She began to walk toward the passenger side when I was re-inspired.

"Hey," I said, tossing her the keys. "You drive." "Me?" her eyes widened as she caught them. "Drive your car?" "Can't pass the test if you don't practice," I grinned. "You got a permit, right?" She crossed over to the driver's side and adjusted the seat while I took the other seat. "I'm nervous," she said. "I hate sticks. That's why I failed the second test. I got so nervous driving Paige's car."

Shit! A manual transmission, another good reason for me not to be driving.

"Well, just talk yourself through it," I suggested. Talk us both through it, in fact. "All right," she started reciting a litany. "I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and shit!"

We jerked back about a foot and a half and stalled. I looked over and she was literally shaking.

"Can you please drive?" her voice quivered as she stared down at her lap. "No," I said, touching her on the arm. She looked at me with a mixture of embarrassment and anger and suspicion playing across her face. "You remember when we were at Grandpa and Grandma's that one time," I asked her, "when I was, like twelve, and you were eleven? And we were learning how to fish?" She blushed and looked back at her lap.

"Do you remember when you got that worm hooked to your finger?" I continued. "Yes," she said softly.

"Me, too," I chuckled. "And after I got you two lovers apart" — that merited a small giggle from the driver's seat — "I gave it back to you, told you how to do it one more time, and then stepped away. Remember that?" "Uh-huh," she said, looking forward now instead of down. "And when I came back, you'd baited that little sucker all by yourself," I said. "And you ended up catching a big one, too, I think."

"He wasn't that big," she demurred. "I think you're missing the point," I said gently. "First of all, I want to say 'thank you.'" I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "I love this hat and this scarf and I can't believe you made them for me."

"You do?" she asked, finally looking at me again. "I do," I nodded. "Second of all, I bet Dad watches you like a hawk when you're driving my car, and Paige probably gets worried about you scratching up her paint or burning up her clutch." She nodded.

"Or being attacked by a deer," I added as an afterthought, producing the first genuine laughter I had heard in the Torres household all day. "So I'm just gonna sleep here," I said, putting the seat back, slouching down in it, and closing my eyes. "Take me for a ride, Jeeves."

We stalled again on the way out, and once getting into first gear at the end of the driveway. After that, though, it was a piece of cake. I kept my left eye closed the whole way, in case she looked over, but the right was open, scanning the scenery. At a minimum I was going to learn how to get to Uncle Damon and Aunt Daphne's.

As Imogen smoothly pulled into the driveway, I learned that they hadn't moved. Whether I could find my way there again or home for that matter, was another question.

"You should come in," Imogen turned to me with a look of delighted triumph when she set the brake and turned the car off. "Why wouldn't I come in?" I asked. "When was the last time you were here?" she countered. "I honestly can't remember," I said, honestly not remembering. "Well, you certainly didn't come last Christmas," she said. "I was the only one who bothered. I don't think you've been here at all, in fact, since Mom died."

"Really?" I asked. That seemed unlikely. I had always loved visiting Mom's family; they were so, I don't know, exuberant about life. "Hell, you practically spent all day last Christmas over at Heather's," she sneered, drawing out the name "Heather" so that it sounded like I'd spent the day with a slug. "Where was her husband, anyway? I mean, it was Christmas."

"I dunno," I said. I'd also been doing it with a married woman named Heather? Who the hell was I? "So, inside?" We walked up to the door, Imogen growing more and more excited with each step she took. Finally, bouncing up and down, she rang the doorbell. "Aunt Daphne!" she screamed as the door was opened.

"Imogen!" Aunt Daphne, Mom's older sister, was just as enthusiastic as her niece. She stepped forward and the two embraced. Finally, Imogen let go and turned to me. "And is this your boyfriend, dear?" Aunt Daphne asked before Imogen could speak. "I'm Daphne Hatzilakos." She held out her hand. My Aunt Daphne, who'd nursed me through mononucleosis in the eighth grade, was offering me a handshake.

God, what a pitiful asshole I'd become.


	3. Alone

Is this thing on? Not a lot of reviews yet but I do see hits and just hope you're interested enough to see where I'm going with this. Any who hope you enjoy...R/R pretty please?

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_**"You're here where you should be, Snow is falling as the carols sing, It just wasn't the same, Alone on Christmas day" ~Kelly Clarkson**_

**3**

**Drew**

Imogen was at least as mortified as I was that my aunt apparently had no idea who I was "Aunt Caitlin," she murmured, "it's Drew." "Drew?" Aunt Caitlin asked.

"Andrew?" Imogen tried again. "My, uh, brother?"

"Oh my gosh," Aunt Caitlin snatched back her hand like she might not even be sure whether I deserved a handshake. "Oh, Andrew, I'm so sorry." She put her hands on my cheeks and looked into my face. "I'm so embarrassed," she said. "Of course it's Andrew. And I saw you just last year. I just didn't realize how much you'd grown."

"I'm sorry I haven't come over more," I mumbled.

"Well, I certainly hope we see you more now," she said. "Now give me a big hug. I leaned down — Aunt Caitlin was only about five-foot-five — and got almost as enthusiastic a hug as my sister had. "Well, come on," she let go and turned around, linking one arm in mine and one in Imogen's. "Everyone's going to be so excited to see you both."

We stepped into a simple foyer, made fancy by the evergreen roping that hung on the staircase, decorated here and there with elegant red globes. There were voices coming from the right.

"Eeeehhhh," I recognized the voice of my Uncle Joey imitating a buzzer. "Next, please." "I thought it was perfect," Aunt Stephanie protested. "Perfectly flat," her husband, Uncle Derek, chimed in. "It's not too late to ruin the gravy," Aunt Stephanie warned him. "Perfectly wonderful," Uncle Derek corrected himself. "But now it's my turn. Maestro? Excuse me, maestress? Maestrix?"

The tinkle of Aunt Caitlin's piano drowned him out and filled the house, and Uncle Derek's baritone followed close behind. "O ni-ight dee-viiiiiine. O-o niiiiiight, when Christ was booooorn. O niiiiight, dee-VIIIIINE — " "No, it's hideous," another woman protested as the piano went silent. "Make it stop! Make it stop!"

"Philistines!" Uncle Derek roared through the laughter.

By that point, Aunt Caitlin had put our coats in the hall closet and escorted us into the living room, where a group of five adults was gathered around the piano, all five of them laughing helplessly. The living room was even more splendidly festive than the hallway. There were candles in all the windows, and a block-shaped pine-scented candle burning inside a wreath on the coffee table. The angel atop the Christmas tree was almost touching the nine-foot ceiling, while the tree itself held globes of silver, red, and gold; and ornaments of every shape and description, ranging from an elegant glass crèche to a homemade lime-colored clay wreath inscribed "Love, Imogen" that had been given a place of prominence right in the middle. And tinsel. This was my mother's family. Strands of tinsel were draped on all the branches, making the whole tree shimmer in the reflected light of hundreds of tiny white bulbs.

I looked over to see a tear running down Imogen's cheek, which she quickly brushed away before the singers realized we were among them.

"Uh-oh, cops," Uncle Derek grinned as he finally caught sight of us. "Cool it everyone." "Imogen!" Aunt Stephanie raised a glass of punch from the piano in a toast to my sister. "And Andrew," Aunt Caitlin added quickly, eager to save everyone else from making the faux pas of not recognizing their nephew.

"Andrew!" Aunt Stephanie's eyes twinkled. She pushed herself off the piano — she'd probably consumed a little more than a moderate amount of the punch, her own special Christmas recipe that I'd never been allowed to try — and walked over to me. "Give us a kiss."

She winked at Imogen and stuck her cheek out at me. Stephanie was Mom's younger sister, probably still a year or two shy of forty, and she'd always been the adventurous one. And the flirtatious one. It was usually Caitlin who got the cheek kisses; Stephanie always liked a nice firm smack on the lips, a source of unending embarrassment to the 15-year-old me who she'd fooled into giving her one that last time she visited us. Or the last time I remembered her visiting us, at least.

Like the others, she was dressed in what I thought of as church clothes — skirts and sweaters for the women; pressed slacks, button-down shirts for the men. I felt very out of place in my jeans and flannel shirt. Imogen, I was only noticing now, had changed out of her jeans into a pair of black slacks and a very pretty plum-colored blouse. I delivered the commanded kiss at the same instant that she turned her head. Our lips met briefly, and I hastily pulled back. "He's gotten taller, hasn't he?" Aunt Stephanie asked Imogen with a merry giggle.

"A little," Imogen smiled back at her. "More support for my swelled head."

Everybody had a good laugh at my expense, and Imogen collected a hug and a kiss from her other aunt as well. Uncles Derek and Joey came over with handshakes for me and kisses for Imogen, and then Aunt Caitlin turned to her other guests, a handsome couple in their late twenties or early thirties.

"Rick and Heather Poulette," she said, "I'd like you to meet my niece and nephew, Imogen and Andrew Torres." Jeff rose to offer my hand, while Heather stayed seated at the piano bench, from which she offered us a half-hearted wave. She looked a little nauseous, to tell the truth, Caitlin, and Uncle Derek hustled back to her side to ask if she was all right.

"A little too much punch, maybe," she said weakly. "Could I just have a glass of water?"

My aunts raced toward the kitchen for some water as the men gathered solicitously around the stricken woman. She was incredibly attractive; her church clothes included a sweater that seemed to have expelled all of the air that might have fit between it and her skin. "I thought you said she moved," Imogen stepped toward me and whispered into my ear.

I suddenly wasn't feeling that good myself, and the next glass of water was for me. After a time, though, both Heather and I recovered. She seemed intent on ignoring me for the rest of the afternoon, or at least ignoring whatever relationship we had had. For my part, I was as blissfully ignorant as everyone else in the room of the details of that relationship. Only Imogen apparently knew that there had been one, and she treated Shelia with an initial coolness that I'd never seen in her before.

After a while, even that thawed. Imogen could no more ignore the spirit of Christmas than she could stop breathing, and soon she was standing behind Heather, her hand on Heather's shoulder, taking her own turn at the show-stopping chorus of "O Holy Night." After I had a turn, standing well in back of Heather, Imogen was awarded first prize, and allowed to select any ornament she wanted from the tree. "How 'bout that wreath?" Uncle Joey joked, pointing at Imogen's youthful gift.

"You touch that wreath, Joey Hatzilakos," Aunt Caitlin's eyes flashed, "and you'll lose something very dear to you." "Very dear to you," he suggested with a flick of his eyebrows. "I can get another one," Aunt Caitlin quickly retorted.

"I could make a better one," Imogen offered.

The room exploded into laughter. "A better wreath, I meant," Imogen turned a brilliant crimson. "It's a little, uh, lumpy." "You touch that wreath, Imogen Torres," Aunt Caitlin turned on her, "and you'll get no pie for dessert." "She gets no pie and I get disfigured?" Joey asked. "I know which punishments work on which offenders," Aunt Caitlin smirked. "Now which one would you like, dear?"

Imogen had to examine each and every ornament on the tree, and finally plucked a hand-painted wooden Santa Claus off a branch in the back. She held it out to Aunt Caitlin with great delight, and Aunt Caitlin, with equal delight, pulled open a drawer in one of her tables and extracted a box in which the ornament fit perfectly. "You knew!" Imogen seemed awed. "I bought it for you," Aunt Caitlin smiled at her. "Still, I'm surprised you won it this early. I was figuring you'd win charades once everybody else got a little tipsy."

As it turned out, I won the charades, even though I had earlier been pronounced old enough to finally sample the punch and was probably a little tipsy myself. In a similar vein, both Imogen and I were pronounced old enough to be able to dispense with "Aunt" and "Uncle," which Stephanie argued made her feel old.

Dinner was served just after three, a turkey that had been butchered at a local farm only two days earlier, and that Joey butchered again with his electric carving knife. It was still wonderful, though, just like stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and Caitlin's exquisite gravy. Later, when Imogen was busy washing dishes in the kitchen and Joey had dragged Derek and Rick out to the garage to see my new toy, I found myself sitting at the table with Heather.

"So how have you been?" she asked quietly. "A little sick," I admitted. "Not quite myself lately."

"I've been thinking of you," she said. While she was thinking, she'd apparently kicked off one of her heels. I could feel a stockinged foot begin to trace a course up my leg. "My husband never found out who it was, you know. Only that I was cheating on him." "Uh-huh," I agreed. Her foot had reached my crotch, and I couldn't believe that I wasn't exploding into my pants.

"Therapy was so boring," she said, taking another sip of the wine we'd shared during dinner as she began rubbing the ball of her foot up and down the ridge in my jeans created by my swollen dick. "And I guess I sort of promised not to do it again. But still..." She gave me a look that could almost be described as predatory.

Just then, Stephanie popped back in from the kitchen, gaily humming "Deck the Halls."

"You drove out the men?" she asked us. Heather had yanked her foot out of my lap as if it were on fire, and she lifted her glass for another drink. "They went to check out Joey's car," I answered Stephanie, happy for a change of subject. "His car," Stephanie nodded knowingly. "So that's where he keeps the annual Playboy magazine that Caitlin gives him each Christmas."

Stephanie sat back down at the table and picked up her own half-full wine glass. "So," she looked at me after a sip, "tell us what's new?" "New?" I asked. As far as I was concerned, everything was new. "New girlfriend?" Stephanie teased me with a guileless wink at Heather. "Any new scholarship offers?" "No," I shook my head. "Not that I know of."

"I'd still like to go to NYU," I added. I wondered if I'd even submitted an application? Or whether, as an in-demand jock, I simply considered myself above applications. Now it was Stephanie shaking her head. "Well, you can ask Derek," she said, "but apparently they've decided to toughen up academic standards for athletic scholarships, and I think they're starting with the baseball recruits. Here he is. Honey, what was it you told me about baseball scholarships?"

"Pretty ruthless," Derek said. "A two point seven five average and somewhere around a 1400 on the SAT combination."

I nodded to myself. That didn't sound that hard. The last report card I remembered, after the first semester of ninth grade, had straight A-pluses, which was like, what, a four-five? I had no idea what my average was at this point, of course, and no idea whether I'd even taken the SAT. By now, though, everyone else had gathered around the table again, and judging by the look on Imogen's face, I wasn't going to be attending NYU any time soon. I felt tears coming to my eyes, and I tried to cover them up by knocking over my water glass.

"I'm sorry," Imogen said gently as we got settled into the car for the ride home. "You never mentioned NYU anymore, so I thought you'd given up on it. "It doesn't matter," I said. "That was fun, huh?" "That was Christmas," Imogen sighed, nestling herself into the passenger seat like she was ready for a nap.

Oh shit. She was in the passenger seat. I was in the driver's seat.

"So you wanna drive back?" I asked her as casually as I could. "No," she said sleepily. "I just wanna sit here and remember that feeling." She stretched like a cat, and I returned my attention to the car.

All right, I thought to myself, trying to replay the instructions Imogen had recited, I put in the clutch, I start the car. I let the parking brake off, I put it in reverse. Now I slowly let my foot off the clutch, and when I feel it reach the stall point, I put on the gas, and - YESSS! I pumped my hand as the car began backing down the driveway. Thank God for muscle memory; apparently I'd done this enough that my feet and hands could feel when it was time to shift and when it was time to let the clutch out. I'd done a good job memorizing the directions, too, and had no trouble navigating my way home.

Driving? That was another story altogether. Thank God for tryptophan, or whatever it is in turkey that puts you to sleep, because Imogen would have been terrified of ever getting in any car again, let alone mine, if she had seen the two dogs we almost hit, the stop sign we ran through, the cute little family that had to jump back to the curb with expressions of horror on their cute little faces — yeah, like I'd really been that close to the stroller — and the general disregard I showed for the dotted and solid lines that had been painted down the middle of the road. Muscle memory is apparently of absolutely no use outside of that shifting thing. Once you've got the car going, that whole driving business apparently requires input from the brain. Mine was still 15 years old, the same age it had been yesterday when I went to sleep.

Finally, thank God for Christmas; on any other day of the year, the roads between our house and Aunt Caitlin's would have been filled with traffic, and even more pedestrians than the ones whose lives I'd nearly ended. With sweat dripping from my chin, I pulled into our driveway and jerked the car to a halt.

"Are we here already?" Imogen asked, once again doing the cat stretch. "Thanks, Drew. Thanks for bringing me. You did have fun, didn't you?" "I did," I nodded, a little taken aback at the surprise with which she'd laced that question. "After a while, I even forgot what a schlub I looked like." "Nobody noticed," she smiled, still lost in nostalgic reverie. "Nobody ever notices anything like that over there. Speaking of which, that was Heather, wasn't it?"

Reverie over.

"Um," I said, "I really thought she'd moved. I haven't seen her in, like, forever. She seems to be happy with her husband, though." "Bullshit," Imogen said. "I saw the way she looked at you when she thought nobody else was looking. You be careful, Drew. The last thing you need is another paternity test." She looked at our house, the lights of the tree in the living room the only visible sign that we celebrated Christmas.

"Whaddya bet they're in there having meatloaf for Christmas dinner?" she sighed. She slammed the door and left me in the car to ponder my life. Another paternity test? I hoped to God I'd at least passed that one.


	4. Torn

This story is pretty much written so I'm not gonna waste it because of no reviews, someone is bound to read it I'm sure! Anywho here we are again, this story is long but I'm gonna get it up as fast as I can, because I am excited about it and excited about sharing it. I will let you know once again there is language and adult content especially later on, I have it rated T for now but it will go up to M.

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_**"I'm wide awake and I can see, the perfect sky is torn" ~Natalie Imbruglia**_

**4**

In one sense, every day is the first day of the rest of your life. December 26, 2014, though, was a little bit more. Christmas was over, and I woke up to find myself in the same room, in the same body, and in the same life in which I'd found myself the day before. All of which were three years older than they were when I'd gone to bed on December 24.

My first thought as I woke up, stretched, and sat up in bed, was that if Mom were still alive, she'd reinstate spanking just to make sure my room never looked like this again. And I would have agreed with her; it was disgusting. So laundry was still high on my list of priorities. Since it was only seven o'clock, however, I figured I'd better wait a bit to start that project. Instead, I tiptoed down to the kitchen, where Dad and my older brother Jay were drinking coffee and reading the paper, Dad the sports section and Jay the business news.

"Morning," I said cheerfully.

"Huh," Jay grunted.

Dad just looked over at me.

"Say, Jay," I tried again, pouring myself a cup of coffee, "thanks for the subscription." He nodded, still without so much as a glance at me. "So wadda you doin' today?" Dad asked me. "I dunno," I shrugged. "You're not gonna lift, are you?" his eyes narrowed. "You don't need that shit at this point." "Yeah," I agreed. Okay, no lifting. "Yeah, wouldn't want to strain the golden arm," Jay muttered. "I don't remember your brother givin' you shit when you were playin,'" Dad said pointedly. "Yeah, I know," Jay sighed and finally looked at me. "Sorry, little bro. Thanks for the gift card." "Sure," I said. God only knew which store I'd gotten him a gift card from. "Actually," I turned back to Dad, "I still need to do some laundry." "Paige'll be up soon," Dad said. "Let her do it."

"Maybe he doesn't want his clothes to end up all the same color," Jay blurted out. I watched Dad tense up, to the point where I could see the blood throbbing in his neck. Jay also realized he'd gone too far. "Hey, sorry, Dad," he said, pushing himself back from the table. "It's been a tense week." "Things rough at the Seven-Eleven?" Dad growled. "I think the Wal-Mart's hiring." Jay bit back his own snappy comeback, put his dishes in the sink and left. Dad watched him go, and then turned to me. "I swear one day I'm just gonna chuck his ass outta here," he said. He left for work himself a few minutes later, and Imogen appeared a few minutes after that.

"Morning," I said. I figured the third time might be the charm as she sleepily walked around the kitchen to get herself a bowl of cereal.

"What do you want?" she demanded. Apparently I was mistaken. "Sorry," I said, holding up my hand. What was it with this family? "Look," she paused with an open milk bottle in her hand. "Christmas was special. Nice, even. But you don't have to pretend we're friends any more." She said it with such savagery that the part of me that wanted to protest — to whine "we're not friends any more?" — found itself without a voice. Instead, I simply asked if she thought that anyone would mind if I started a load of laundry.

She looked at me with a smirk.

"Queen Paigy and Princess Maya?" she scoffed. "They could sleep through a fire. When did you get so domestic?" "No underwear," I said, putting a quick end to that discussion. "Do you know if the school's open today?" "I thought all you jocks had your own key to the weight room," she spat. "I meant the office," I said quietly. "Oh," she said. "I dunno. I guess. Why?" "I was, uh, thinkin' about changing some classes," I told her. "Why?" she asked suspiciously. "I dunno," I shrugged. "I see Jay and I think, suppose I get hurt. You know, what would I do then? I mean, no offense to the guy, but that's not really where I wanna see myself." "What is it with you?" Imogen asked as she sat down at the table. "What?" "Are you high?" I just laughed. She shook her head, and we settled down to eat in silence. From my standpoint, the less I said about anything at this point, the less trouble I could get into.

I did my laundry, and around ten o'clock, with Paige and Maya still dead to the world, I hiked the two miles between my house and the high school. The front door was open, although the office itself held the only signs of life. Fortunately, it hadn't changed much. When you entered the office, you still came face-to-face with a counter, the first barrier between us, students, and them, the school's administration. Behind the counter were two desks, one normally occupied by Mrs. Bhandari, the other by Mrs. Perry. Together, the story went, they ran the school, occasionally dragging Mr. Raditch out of his principal's office to make announcements before they locked him back inside the office.

Today, though, there was only one young lady sitting at one of the desks, a Ms. Bhandari, if the sign on her desk was right. She was much nicer looking than either Mrs. Bhandari or Mrs. Perry had been, and if I lingered a few minutes at the counter before clearing my throat to attract her attention, well, who could blame me? Exotic, petite, slender, her raven hair pulled back into a somewhat severe-looking bun, she sat there studying her computer screen with a pair of reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the world.

"Did you want something, Mr. Torres, or were you just going to stand there all and wait for someone to announce your visit?"

She still hadn't looked at me yet, although apparently I'd been wrong about the obliviousness. "I, uh, I was thinking about changing my class schedule," I stammered. She raised an eyebrow and cocked her head at me. "I'm not sure we could make it any easier for you," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "Maybe we could just assign you a room and your teachers could rotate in and out. Then we could have your lunch delivered as well." She'd put a couple of air quotes around the word "teachers." Did I not have real teachers this year?

"Drewster!"

A baldish-looking man came hustling out of the principal's office, his hand extended. I eagerly grasped it, the first sign I'd seen yet that someone knew who I was and was happy to see me. Evidently the occupant of the principal's office had changed as well. This would be Archie Simpson, according to the fake-wood sign at the entrance. "How was your holiday, um, sir?" I asked. "Excellent, Trickster, excellent. And call me Snake. How about yours?" "Fine, thank you, sir. Pete," I said, finally pulling my hand loose. "Excellent," he smiled. "So what can we do for you?" "Mr. Torres thinks his courses next semester are too hard," Ms. Bhandari said scornfully. "Actually," I said softly, "I don't believe I said that, ma'am. I simply said I had some thoughts about changing my class schedule." "Well, let's see what we've got," 'Pete' said. Ms. Bhandari had already pulled my schedule up and was holding it between her forefinger and thumb as if it would infect her. 'Snake' snatched it from her hands, her message flying right over his head, "First period," he read, "Principles of Government with Mr. Perino. That looks good."

Ms. Bhandari was shaking her head.

"Second period," he continued. "The second half of Mr. Townsend's American History survey. Just between us, you might want to go to a few more classes this semester, Trick." Ms. Bhandari rolled her eyes. "And fourth period," he concluded, "English Self-study with Mrs. Stone." After a few seconds of silence, it became clear that he'd finished reading. "That's it?" I asked. "Three classes? All I have is three classes? What do I do in the afternoon?" "Coach Stone wanted that kept clear for scouts and practice," Pete winked at me. "I played a little ball in high school myself, you know, Trick. I know how important it is to make a good impression and keep in shape." The phone rang just then, and Ms. Bhandari answered it and told Pete that it was Superintendent Shepard. "Whoa, gotta take this," Pete gave me another wink. "Don't go away, Trick." He bounded into the other room and closed the door behind him, but Ms. Bhandari and I could both hear the "Merry Christmas, sir!"

"So what is it you're unhappy with?" Ms. Bhandari turned her attention back to me. I decided I needed to level with somebody, at least to a certain extent, and I'd concluded, based on nothing more than ninth-grade instinct, that Archie "Snake" Simpson might not be the best guy to start with. After all, he was a ballplayer, too, wink wink. I imagined him reacting the same way my father would have reacted if I'd told him I wanted a more challenging schedule. "Can I ask you a question, ma'am?" I put as much sincerity into my voice as I could.

Ms. Bhandari blinked.

"Certainly," she said. "Can I come sit at the desk?" I asked in a conspiratorial whisper. I slipped around the counter to take the chair beside her desk after I got her nod. "What would I have to do to get a 2.75?" "You'd have to get B-minuses," she said, trying to figure out whether I was trying to trick her. "No, I mean permanently." "You mean for a high-school average?" she asked, her eyebrows shooting into the wispy bangs that had come loose from her bun. "Exactly," I smiled. "What would I have to get this semester?" She hit some keys on her computer. "You'd have to take five substantive courses," she said, "and average a 4.6. Then you'd end up with a 2.749 which would get rounded up to a 2.75." I'm sure my face fell. If I got all A-pluses I could average only a 4.5. "So it's impossible," I mumbled. "Well, no," she said. "Not impossible. But given your academic record I'd have to say it was extremely unlikely." "But I could do it? In theory?"

"If you took one honors course," she said. "And got A-pluses in everything." She looked skeptical, and given what I'd learned up to this point — that it would take five A-pluses this semester just to get me close to a B-minus overall — she probably had good reason. But I saw an opening, and I wasn't about to let it close. "So, like, what could I take?" She pushed a few more buttons and printed out a schedule for me. First and second period were the same; third period was Honors English, fourth period was "The Physics of Astronomy," and fifth period was something called "People of the Book" a course labeled "REL 101." "And other than astronomy lab on Wednesday afternoons," she said with a quiet seriousness, "this leaves all your afternoons free like Coach Stone wanted."

"Huh," I looked at the paper. "Can I ask you another question?" "Certainly, Mr. Torres," she smiled at me. "I'm enjoying today very much so far." "'Cause you think they really coddle athletes around here, don't you?" I asked. She stared at me. "Your mother thought that, too," I said. "I remember her talking with my mother once, about my older brother, when I was still in ninth grade and hangin' out here at the office waiting for a ride home. And this English Self-study I have with Ms. Stone — the coach's wife? — " she was nodding — "is...?" "Crap," she said with the ghost of a smile. "So I can take all these courses?" I held up the list.

"Why?"

I looked at the principal's door, and then turned back to her. "I would really like to go to the New York University next year," I said. "And I was told they require a 2.75 average and a 1400 on the SATs for a baseball scholarship." "You're serious," she looked at me, her eyes softening just a bit. "I am," I nodded. "You'll have to re-take the SATs, you know." "I figured," I nodded. "I guess I really didn't put a lot of effort into them, huh?" "You got a 790." "On the reading?" I asked. I'd looked up the SAT scoring system when I got back home last night. Evidently there were now three of them: Reading, Math, and Critical Analysis. I was always better at reading. A 790 was pretty damn good. "On all of them, Mr. Torres," she said. "A 790 on all three of them together." "Shit," I blurted out. "That pretty much describes it, Mr. Torres." I looked over to see a smile playing across her lips once again. I couldn't help but smiling myself, and pretty soon we were both laughing out loud. Finally, we quieted down and she waited for me to continue.

"I'm dead serious about this, Ms. Bhandari," I said. "I can take 'em again on the 27th of next month, right?" "I'll sign you up, Mr. Torres. As for these classes, the only prerequisite for the three new courses here is Introductory Physics, and you took that last year." So I knew physics? Well, damn. "So what's this course?" I pointed at the "People of the Book." "The School Board wanted a religion class this year," she frowned. "Who teaches it?" "Mrs. Kwan." "As in Laur-?" I stopped myself. "Kwan." she finished with another smile. "Yes, Laura Kwan. She insisted on being allowed to teach this course. She was afraid that it would become just another Christian education class if somebody else got hold of it. You haven't had her for anything else, have you?" She was frowning at her computer while I mumbled my answer. "I'm sorry?" she asked. "Sunday school," I finally said. "I had her for Sunday School." "Perfect," Ms. Bhandari smiled. "Now it won't just be a class of evangelicals. You only have one problem left."

I raised an eyebrow.

"You have to get Mrs. Dawes's permission to take Honors English," she said, in a tone that suggested that that would require some sort of divine intervention. "Mrs. Dawes likes me," I protested. "I got an A-plus from her last, er, in ninth grade. Uh, first semester" Ms. Bhandari looked back at her computer as my voice trailed off. "Yes, you did," she nodded. "And then a B second semester. And then a C last year, after your initial incomplete. As I remember, you turned in your final paper two weeks late, and got a C on it. Normally, the incomplete would have been replaced with a C-minus, one grade lower than your paper, but she talked Mr. Raditch into giving you the C. So you may have used up all your good will with Mrs. Dawes.

"Unfortunately," she continued, "she's on her winter cruise this week, and won't be back until next Monday. You really think you can talk her into this?" "Honestly, I have no idea," I said. "It's worth a try though, huh?" "For NYU? Yes, it is. My father went there. He used to go on and on about it. I tell you what, why don't we keep this our little secret until then?"

I gave her a quizzical look.

"If it doesn't work," she said. "You can take your current schedule and go on to the major league draft. We'll be the only ones who ever know. Because if Mrs. Dawes says okay, Coach Stone's gonna hit the roof. And this one" — she nodded toward the principal's door — "will run right to him to tell him. "So if you can talk her into it," she continued, "give me a call on Tuesday and I'll have you all set to go when school starts on Wednesday." "That's the only way?" I asked. "I'm afraid all of the other honors classes have prerequisites that you don't meet," she shook her head. "Even in the afternoon?" I asked. "I'm afraid so, Patrick," she said gently. "I'll be keeping my fingers crossed."

"So!" boomed Pete from his office doorway. "What do we need to do to make your schedule better, Drewster?" "You know," I said, "I think that Ms. Bhandari and I have got it all figured out. Turns out we can't make it any easier after all." Ms. Bhandari had the decency to blush as I stood up, and I thanked her and "Snake" and made my way out to the street.


	5. Kiss

What does a girl to do to get some reviews around here? Add Smut?

OK Now this story is officially M, if you were reading before and didn't understand the warnings in advance please understand them now. It's M and there's adult content (aka smut). I really wonder if any one has gotten all the little bit I put in, such as names and who people are and what not, and yes certain characters are older and so on. Oh well, the world may never know.

SMUT! You're warned!

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**_"It started out with a kiss how did it end up like this? I was only a kiss!" ~The Killers_**

**5**

My next stop was the public library, another two blocks past the high school. I was supposed to know physics and baseball, and the library had always been where I went for information. It was one of my favorite places, or at least it had been back in ninth grade. Two days or three years ago, depending on your point of view. I found myself hoping that it hadn't changed too much. The lady who sat behind the circulation desk most of the time, Katie Matlin, was probably my very first crush. She'd started work when I was between seventh grade and eighth grades, just after she graduated from college. She was just about my size then, maybe five-foot five inches tall. I was always afraid she'd catch me staring at her, although it never stopped me, particularly when she was wearing a sweater. And yet, as nice as she looked, her best feature was her beautiful smile; I loved to ask her for recommendations about books because it was so clear that she loved to answer me.

I was very pleased to find the place open. It was about as crowded as the school had been. There was one older lady by the new arrival shelf with a book in each hand, comparing the blurbs on the back of each to decide which one to check out. And there she was, sitting at the desk, just as beautiful as she'd been, well, two weeks ago. Wearing a sweater to ward off the winter chill.

"Hi, Miss Matlin," I approached her shyly. "I was looking for a book on — "

"Drew!" her face lit up with a smile as she saw me. Not the smile of a librarian who had a new book she was dying to recommend, but an odd sort of expectant smile that she emphasized by running the tip of her tongue across her upper lip. She held up a finger to quiet me. "Let me get rid of Mrs. York first," she whispered. "Okay," I said, "but really, I just wanted a book — " "I know, Drew" she interrupted me. "I remember the game. But not with Mrs. York standing right over there. Why don't you go look at the new Sports Illustrated?" I actually picked up a Newsweek — did everybody think I only read SI? — and settled into one of the comfortable chairs in the library's reading room. Miss Matlin stood up, smoothed her skirt with a wink at me, and approached the older lady.

"Why don't you just take both of them, Mrs. York?" she suggested. "Oh, no, dear," the woman protested, "I always end up being overdue, and then I have to pay the late fee, and I really can't afford to —" Miss Matlin had taken the books out of her hand and strode back to the circulation desk, leaving Mrs. York in her wake making her futile protests to Miss Matlin' back. "There," Miss Matlin said when she was seated again, "I wiped out all your late fees, and I've made sure that neither of these books is due until the end of February." "Well, thank you, dear," Mrs. York seemed more than a little taken aback by Miss Matlin' forbearance.

"Merry Christmas, Mrs. York," Miss Matlin smiled at her. "Well, you, too, dear," Mrs. York said. She slipped the books in her large bag and began to make her way slowly toward the front door. I watched her close the door behind her, and then turned back to see Miss Matlin looking directly at me, once again slowly licking her upper lip as she held up the index finger of her right hand. She looked at the door, and suddenly jumped to her feet and quickly covered the twenty feet between her desk and the door. With a quick look outside, she took the sign off the door that read "Open" and turned around to show me that she'd tucked its little chain into the front of her skirt. With a grin, she grabbed the little sign that hung by the side of the door, the one with the little clock on it that read "Out to Lunch. Will return at." She glanced at the clock over the circulation desk, which read 11:45, and set the clock on the sign. She turned it around to show me she'd set it for 1:00.

Realization was slowly beginning to dawn on me; the "Open" sign hanging on the front of her skirt was too obvious even for me to miss. But the idea that Miss Matlin would be interested in me, a ninth-grader, was nearly too much to take. I watched in a haze as she hung the new sign in the window, and pulled the shade down behind it. "I'm sorry," she said to me in a husky voice as she went back to sit behind the desk, "you were asking me about a book, Mr. Torres." She returned to the book she was reading when I came in.

Okay, I thought. Don't panic. She said it's a game. It's a game with librarians and books. Well, of course, it's a game with librarians and books, idiot, you're in a frickin' library. I pushed myself out of the chair and walked over to her desk. "Um," I began far more suavely than I felt, "I wondered if you had any surveys of American history."

She peered up at me over the top of her book

"I believe we have a few books on that subject, young man," she said. "Follow me, please." She led me to an aisle containing one of those two-step stools that librarians use to get books off the top shelf. "I think we might have something on the top shelf," she grinned at me. I tentatively climbed the stool and she immediately reached for the zipper on my pants when I reached the top step.

"Oh, God," I moaned. Katie Matlin seemed to know her way around my cock like it came with its own road map, teasing me with her tongue and her teeth, gently tugging on the shaft with her fingers when her lips were busy with the head, and then burying her chin against my balls before she backed off with an explosive exhalation of air through her nose. Unfortunately, it was my first blow job, that I can remember at least, and knowing that last week's crush had magically become this week's lover didn't help. It ended quickly. "Well, that was certainly a brief trip to the library," she said with a little asperity as she finished swallowing my spunk.

Oh, shit, it ended way too quickly.

"Maybe you should take a look," I said hastily. "I should take a look?" she asked me, wrinkling her brow. "For the book," I said. Apparently this hadn't been part of the game before, but she took my hand and let me walk her up the little step stool. Based on, aah, previous experiments, I knew that it would take a little time for me to recover. And I kind of had the feeling that if we spent that time, oh, I don't know, looking through the card catalogue, I might find myself an unwelcome library patron for the rest of my life.

I moved behind her and slowly rolled her skirt up over her ass. As a somewhat introverted ninth grader, my sexual experience to this point had included a full-semester health class and a few kisses with Clare Edwards. Not much to go on. Oh, and while I was deleting most of the porn bookmarks from my computer before I'd gone to bed last night, I did sort of look at a few of them first. I probably knew just enough to get me in trouble; the potential for seriously disappointing Miss Matlin was clearly there. Pulling her white panties tight into her crotch, which itself earned me a shiver and a moan, I began kissing my way around her two beautiful round cheeks. It soon became apparent, though, as she gripped the bookshelves for support, that the panties, and not my kisses, were responsible for most of the moaning she was doing. I was nothing if not adaptable; I pulled them down to her knees and replaced them with first my fingers, and then with my tongue, and then with both together.

"Oh, God, Trick," she cried. "That's so good, honey. I can't believe you're doing this to me."

I couldn't believe I'd never done it before. What a selfish son of a bitch I must be. This was actually fun; not only that, it considerable shortened the time I needed to come back to life. In fifteen minutes, just after my finger had located something that made her scream "Oh, yes, my clit, do my clit," she scrambled down the stepping stool and bent over in front of me. This time I was determined to last. I thought about old Mrs. York, I thought about old Mrs. Perry, I thought about baseball (what little I knew about it); I thought about everything except the gorgeous ass on the gorgeous woman in front of me. I reached around to finger the clit I'd found before, sending her into a spasm of what I hoped was pleasure. She didn't make me stop, so I kept right on, managing to get two more spasms from her before I had a spasm of my own.

Oh, shit. Well, too late now. Pulling herself off of me, she turned and threw her arms around me, driving her tongue halfway down my throat. I did my best to respond in kind, and it seemed to satisfy her. "God, Drew," she teased me after pulling back a bit. "Been doing some extra reading on your own, have you? Or just practicing with your other girlfriends?" "Uh, yeah," I said. "Look, I'm sorry I didn't take care of the, uh, protection thing, you know."

She laughed, a glorious peal of giggles.

"Yeah, right," she said, giving my softening cock a squeeze. "The day Drew Torres puts a rubber on is the day I let him do me in the ass." That was enough to make me twitch again, and she looked down in amazement. "I — I can't do it again, baby," she looked at me suddenly, tears welling in her eyes. "You were just pounding me for so long. I'm — I'm sorry." "That was great," I said. "Say it," she grinned up at me. I only now realize that I topped her by a good eight inches.

"Say what?" I asked.

"You know," she went on in a teasing voice before dropping her voice to a parody of a man's. "You were great, baby." "You were great, baby," I agreed. "You too, stud," she said, giving me another long kiss before she finally disengaged. "Shit," she said, looking at her watch. "One-oh-five. Guess I better open up, huh?" "Uh, yeah," I said. "About those books, though?"

"What?" she laughed, straightening out her skirt as I pulled my pants back up. "You really want books?" "Yeah," I said. "Is that so odd?" "Not three years ago," she said, reaching up to pat me on the head. "Little Andrew Torres was my favorite customer then. That was before he became big Andrew Torres." She pulled her hand down to pat me on the crotch before she walked out to re-open the library.

"So what can I get for you?" she asked when she returned.

I walked out of the library with Physics for Dummies, American History for Dummies, and Baseball for Dummies. I explained the last one by telling her that I was going to be doing some coaching this year and needed to know how to reach the novice players I'd be working with. I would have checked out Sex for Dummies, too, if they'd had it, but I thought it would be even harder to explain that one than the baseball book.


	6. Lies

I hope you all get my little trivia jokes in this, they're fun for me! Any other writers out there, have you ever written your fics completely from your phone? It sucks but makes me proud!

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_**"Now I'll be bold, as well as strong, and use my head alongside my heart, so tame my flesh, and fix my eyes, a tethered mind freed from the lies" ~Mumford & Sons**_

**6**

I spent the next two days studying, in between cleaning up my room. One of the things I discovered was the paper I'd turned in to Mrs. Dawes after my junior year, in a course on Contemporary Drama. It was an essay on "Murder in the Cathedral," by T. S. Eliot, and as I read it, I could see why I only got a C. I could have written this in ninth grade.

Apparently Mrs. Dawes had agreed. There it was, in black and white on the last page: "You could have written this in ninth grade, Andrew. It is at best average work for an eleventh grader; it is below average work for the eleventh grader I expected you to become." I sat down hard on my bed. Talking Mrs. Dawes into letting me into her class wasn't going to be as easy as I'd thought. It wasn't until late Thursday afternoon that I came up with a plan for that one.

I kept on reading and working throughout Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, keeping my door locked against the chance that Paige would come calling for some of what Katie Matlin had gotten. I still couldn't imagine that I'd had sex with my father's new wife, even when she wasn't pregnant. The thought of doing it now almost made me gag. But apparently I was nothing if not a son of a bitch.

On Sunday morning I got up and started to get ready to go to church. I'd gone to church the week before, in my old life, and I was a bit surprised to find that I had nothing in my closet now that I could remotely call "church clothes." I put on my best pair of jeans and a halfway decent corduroy shirt, and met Imogen in the hallway as she was coming out of her room.

"What do you think?" I asked her. "About what?" she asked. "This," I pointed to the outfit. "For church." "You're going to church?" she asked. "You haven't been to church since Mom died." "Well, maybe I want to go again," I said. I was stunned. I had three years of perfect attendance at Sunday School. Somewhere in my room there were three gold stars to prove it. "No," she shook her head, "not in that." "Why?" I asked. "It's disrespectful," she said. "If you really want to go to church, buy something nice. God knows you can afford it. Now if you'll excuse me."

She stepped around me at the same time I heard a car pulling into the driveway. I walked back into my room and saw a well-used Accord idling at the end of the front walk. Imogen emerged from the house with a wave at the car and climbed into the passenger side as I tried to figure out who was driving. She looked very familiar. Oh, God. Clare Edwards. It was Clare Edwards, my first kiss. Imogen said something to her and Clare suddenly looked up to see me looking back down at her. I smiled and waved at her. She flipped me the bird and turned around to begin backing down the driveway.

########################

The woman who opened the door to my knock early in the afternoon on January 2nd was clearly surprised to see me.

"Mister Torres," she said coldly, holding the door open two feet and no more. "What can I do for you?" "I came to ask a favor, Ms. Dawes," I said. I'd dressed nicely, in the same outfit I'd tried to wear to church before Imogen shot it down. I figured if I'd dressed in church clothes — which I hadn't managed to buy yet, anyway — Ms. Dawes would have been a little suspicious. As it was, she gave me a long look, as if measuring me for a suit. "Come in," she sighed finally, after the inspection was finished. "May I offer you a drink?" "No, thank you, ma'am."

She gestured to the couch, and took a seat opposite me. "Ma'am, I'd like to take your English Honors class," I began. "Absolutely not," she cut me off. "Ma'am, I — " "Mister Torres," she cut me off again. "Let me tell you a story. I had a very good student in my ninth grade English class. But he became involved in sports and unlike some of the athletes I've known — some of the student-athletes — his academic work started to slip." "Ma'am," I started again.

She held up her hand and I shut up again.

"I monitored his progress throughout tenth grade," she continued, "and it continued to slip. I decided to give him one more chance last year, out of respect for his mother, who'd become a dear friend of mine, and because I remembered what kind of student he'd been. Are you following me, Mister Torres?" I simply looked at her. "He came to class less than half the time," she was working herself into high dudgeon. "When he was there he sat in the back with his friends and smirked at me. He didn't submit his final paper until two weeks after the school year ended. "A paper that was below what he was capable of doing, Mister Torres," she went on, nearly foaming at the mouth now. "Well below. And even then, Mister Torres, even then, I went out on a limb for him and convinced the principal to give him a C as his final grade instead of the C-minus that the rules said he should have received. No, Mister Torres, you are out of favors."

"I understand that, ma'am," I said, "but —" "It is not something that admits of any buts, Mister Torres," she insisted. "This is for you," I said, opening the manila folder I'd brought with me and handing her its contents. "What is it?" she asked skeptically. "It's the paper I should have turned in last spring." She read the title and looked up at me. "You wrote this paper last spring and turned in that other piece of —" she began. "Crap," I agreed. "No, ma'am." She looked even more surprised.

"You wrote this recently?"

"Last week, ma'am," I nodded. "Why?" "To show you how serious I was about getting into your class, ma'am." She gave me another long look and then turned her attention to the paper. She read the first paragraph or two before looking back at me. "If you had come to class," she said, "you would have known I don't agree with your thesis about the role of the Fourth Tempter in Eliot's play." "Actually, ma'am, I was in that class," I said. The notebook I'd found in my pile had contained, among its few scribblings, a notation of Ms. Dawes's views of that very thing. "Then why this?" she held up the paper. "You wouldn't consider it a very persuasive paper, ma'am," I suggested, "if you were already persuaded of its conclusion before you read it." She looked at me like I'd grown antennae, and slowly returned to the paper.

"So you're suggesting that if I acquiesce in your request, I can expect this kind of work, rather than the crap you gave me last year?" she tossed the paper on her coffee table when she'd finished. "I'm suggesting only that this is the kind of effort I'll give you, ma'am," I said. "What you'll get is a different question entirely." She gave me a kind of half-smile, still turning it over in her mind. "I have to point out that this is your fault, ma'am," I said, really pressing my luck. Her eyes flashed at me, challenging me to explain that outrageous statement. "Ma'am, if you'd let Mr. Simpson give me that C-minus, there'd be no way I could pull my average up to a 2.75. But you gave me a C, and Ms. Bhandari in the office tells me that if I do well enough this spring, including in your class, I can get a 2.74 something that will get rounded up to a 2.75."

She looked at me and gave me a crooked smile, which turned into a small chuckle after a few seconds.

"Hoist by my own petard, eh, Mister Torres?" she said. "So it would seem, ma'am," I agreed. "Of course, if you'd turned in this paper, you wouldn't need to take my class," she said, picking up the paper on the coffee table. "Touche, ma'am," I smiled. "Of course, I'm the one who's going to have to pay for both of our mistakes by working my butt off, ma'am. All you have to do is let me in the class." "Oh, very well," she said. "This 2.75 is important to you?" "Yes ma'am," I said. "It's —"

She cut off my explanation with her hand.

"Allow me the fantasy of pretending that your love of learning has simply been reborn, Mister Torres," she said. "And I don't need to point out how disappointed I will be if I don't see the kind of effort you have promised me." "No, ma'am," I smiled. "Thank you. May I use your phone, ma'am? I need to call Ms. Bhandari and let her know." "I'll do it myself, Mister Torres," she said. And she did. Right then and there with me listening.

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I got up early the next morning and found what I thought was most likely the kind of outfit I would wear to school. Imogen didn't say anything nasty about it at breakfast, so I was fairly confident as I followed her out the door to the bus stop. "Where are you going?" she turned abruptly to confront me. "To the bus stop?" I suggested. "You have a car," she pointed to the Subaru in the driveway. "You're a senior. Why take the bus?" "Do you want to practice driving?" I asked her.

"No," she said after a moment's thought. "I'd be too nervous pulling in there. Why aren't you driving? Won't Jenna be upset you're not picking her up?" She said "Jenna" in the same scornful tone she'd said "Heather" on Christmas, so I jumped to the conclusion that Jenna was a girlfriend, probably the girlfriend if she expected a ride to school. "She'll just have to be disappointed," I said nonchalantly. Picking Jenna up had three problems. The first, perhaps not insurmountable problem, was the actual act of driving. I hadn't had the car out since Christmas Day, and wasn't confident of my ability to navigate busy streets that would have crosswalks filled with children. The second, more difficult problem was that I had no idea where Jenna lived. And of course, the third problem: I had no idea who Jenna was. I didn't remember a Jenna from ninth grade.

"So tell me," I said as we reached the bus stop, "which of my girlfriends have you liked?" "I liked Clare," she hissed. "Clare," I nodded. "Before you turned into an asshole with your little blow or go ultimatum," she seethed. "My what?" I asked. "Oh, fuck you, Drew," Imogen spat. "You know exactly what I'm talking about." The bus's arrival prevented any further discussion, so I found a seat by myself at the back. I wouldn't really have broken up with Clare Edwards because she wouldn't give me a blowjob, would I?

"DREW TORRES," came an annoying whine from the front of the bus after one of a series of stops to which I'd stopped paying attention. "The DREWSTER!" I vaguely recognized Dave Turner, a guy I'd been in ninth grade with. He'd never been particularly talented athletically, and he certainly hadn't been nice to me back in ninth grade, so I was inclined to brush him off now. Of course, there was a chance that he was my best friend now. "Dude," I nodded as he eagerly sat down in front of me and turned around. I'd decided that "Dude" would be my answer to everyone, until I figured out who was who and what was what.

"So, good holiday, Drewster?" "'Sokay," I nodded. "Yours?" "Excellent, Drewster," he nodded. "Excellent." We weren't best friends. He was too eager. I'd be willing to bet he'd been cut from the varsity baseball team last year. He managed to chat on for another ten minutes with minimal contributions from me until we reached the school. Fortunately, there were a number of students who couldn't remember the combination to their lockers after the two-week holiday. None of them had my additional problem — no idea which locker was actually theirs. But both of them turned out to be a non-issue. Ms. Bhandari was standing at the counter in the office with a big book opened in front of her, writing down locker numbers and combinations as a line of students filed past her. I waited my turn, I told her my name, and I got my slip of paper. I opened it up just outside the office: "142, 8-15-23; nicely done, Andrew."

The printout that Ms. Bhandari had given me the week before let me know that I had Mr. Oleander for homeroom, and the absence of any explosion or even icy staring let me know that it wasn't something I shared with the mysterious Jenna. I had become more and more apprehensive about meeting this girl. Who was I dating? What was she like? Did we have common interests? I was heartened by the fact that I had obviously been found attractive by Miss Matlin, and disheartened by my apparent rejection of Clare Edwards.

Jenna wasn't in my first period class. Mr. Townsend's government class apparently appealed to the athletes. I recognized most of the guys as athletes, greeting them with high fives, low fives, and forearm bumps as they were offered to me. I greeted every "Drewster" with a "Dude." There was a smattering of girls in the class, as well, although they were a distinct minority. It was a fairly dull class; Mr. Townsend was a fairly dull teacher. He passed out the textbooks, gave us our first assignment, and began lecturing on the separation of powers. I took careful notes, to the obvious surprise of the guys sitting around me.

Second period was a little more exciting. Mr. Perino greeted me with a sarcastic "Nice to see you, Mr. Torres," and then, no more than ten minutes into a quick review of last semester's work, asked me with a smirk to explain the cause of the War of 1812. "The nominal cause, sir, or the real cause?" I innocently blinked my eyes. "I'm sorry?" he stopped his pacing of the front room to stare at me. "Well, of course the nominal cause was the British impressing sailors off of American vessels," I explained, parroting what I'd read in "American History for Dummies." "But many scholars believe that the real causes were economic, of course, having to do with trade between a young America and two countries, France and Britain, that were still at war with each other. And then there's the issue of territorial ambition. Many powerful Americans coveted Canada, which was —"

"Thank you, Mister Torres," he stopped me.

It ended up being a long time before he called on me again, and then only because I raised my hand to argue with him about the objections voiced by Abraham Lincoln to President Polk's 1848 war against Mexico. Jenna wasn't in that class, though, nor was she in Ms. Dawes's class, the Honors English Seminar. I didn't get any high fives, low fives, or forearm bumps in that class. What I got was an entire class of stunned looks, the kind that a luncheon of society matrons would give a bum who wandered into their midst from the street. Ms. Dawes smiled at me, though, and told me she had saved me a seat in the front row. I smiled back and thanked her. And took my seat.

She started teaching immediately, informing us that the entire seminar would be devoted to the works of a single author, Herman Melville. She gave us our first reading assignment, a short story called "Bartleby, the Scrivener," and our first writing assignment. "What I want," she said, "is a one-page single-spaced hypothesis. On the syllabus that I just passed you will find the URL of a website that contains a short biography of Herman Melville. I want you to pick one fact from that biography — just one — and hypothesize about how that fact might have influenced Melville's writing. Has anyone here read Melville?"

It turned out the answer was no, and Mrs. Dawes smiled.

"Good," she said. "I don't want to know — yet — how it did or didn't influence him. What I want from you, by Friday, is how it might have influenced him. For example, he was a crewman on a whaling boat. Oh, and that's the one fact that is off limits. How might his experience on that boat influence his work? What would you look for when you're reading? Miss Baker?" "Will you be grading this, Mrs. Dawes?" came a prim voice from directly in back of me. I recognized Becky Baker's voice, dripping with even more false sweetness than it had in ninth grade. From the little I remember of her, she probably felt betrayed, that Mrs. Dawes had stolen her seat and given it to me.

"I will be grading every single thing you write in this class, Becky," Mrs. Dawes said. "If you write on the board, I will grade that. If you pass notes, I will grade them. If I catch you text-messaging, I will grade that. And since none of you seem to be able to spell in text messages, you should be prepared accordingly. There will be no examinations. This is a writing seminar. Any other questions? Very well, the essay by Friday. Bartleby by Monday."

I was on my way to my fourth period Astronomy Class, clear across the building in the science wing, when I was grabbed by the shirt collar by a short but well-muscled man wearing a T-shirt and sweat pants, who spun me into the front office.


	7. Think

Yay! Double chapters! This one is a door with lots going on and more people in the picture! Enjoy!

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_**"Don't wanna think about it (uh), Don't wanna talk about it (uh), I'm just so sick about it, I can't believe it's ending this way" ~Justin Timberlake**_

**7**

"Coach?" I guessed.

"What the hell is this, Torres?" he asked, waving a piece of paper in front of me. I tried to follow it, unsuccessfully, until I started to get dizzy. I gave up. "Sir?" I asked. "Your schedule?" he finally let me in on what we were discussing. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" I could see Ms. Bhandari watching me intently from behind the counter. "Sir," I began, "I'm taking advantage of the fine educational opportunities that this school offers. I believe I've been remiss in that the past few years." Coach was a little taken aback, behind him, Ms. Bhandari was utterly failing in her effort to suppress a smile.

"Why?" Coach finally sputtered. "Because I don't want to end up as assistant manager at the Seven-Eleven like my brother if I get injured. Sir." "I've gone to a lot of trouble to arrange visits from scouts for you this semester," he changed tactics. "Pro scouts, Drew." "Yes, sir," I said. "I still left my afternoons free, except for Wednesdays. And that's only sixth period." "You do realize that this is our chance at the big leagues, don't you, Drew?" he said. "The team's not gonna be hittin' or fieldin' behind you like last year. We'll be lucky to make the conference playoffs."

"Yes, sir," I said. It didn't surprise me; most of the guys in the front row in the picture on my desk had been seniors last year. I was a little curious about "our" chance at the big leagues, though. "When is the first one scheduled, sir?" I asked. "Thursday," he muttered. "Seventh period." "I'll be there," I smiled. "Ms. Bhandari, can I have a pass for my next class, please?"

The bell had gone off several minutes ago, and with pass in hand I ran down the hall to the physics room, where the students sat not at desks but at lab benches, with two stools to a bench. I handed Mr. Betenkamp my note, and he directed me to the only open seat, at the back of the room near the window, with a very hot-looking red-head who'd broken into a big grin as soon as I entered the room.

"Hey, Drew," she whispered to me as I took my seat. "Hey," I said. "Didja get what you wanted for Christmas?" she continued in a low, sexy tone. Mr. Betenkamp was in the midst of passing out textbooks and explaining what would be expected of us, but I was a little leery of just telling this girl to shut up. She could be Jenna's best friend. Hell, she could be Jenna, although that seemed a little unlikely. "Yeah, sure," I tried to end the conversation. "I didn't get what I wanted," she pressed on in spite of me.

"A gag would have been nice," hissed the girl directly in front of me as she turned around to glare at us.

"Clare Edwards," my benchmate smiled cruelly as she readied a retort, "why don't you —" "Some problem back there?" Mr. Betenkamp asked. "No, sir," Clare whipped back around after a final glare at me. "No," the girl next to me drawled insolently. "No, sir," I said. "Something was squeaking back here — this chair maybe — and Miss Edwards asked me to keep it quiet. I'm sorry if it bothered the class." In front of me, Clare Edwards and her bench partner, a guy I vaguely remembered as some sort of basketball guy, started shaking with giggles. The girl beside me turned her cruel smile into a malicious glare and then turned it on me. But she did shut up for the rest of the class.

Mr. Betenkamp spent the rest of the period explaining that there would be no lab today, but at next Wednesday's lab, he would assign us partners. A week later, he expected each pair of partners to pick a single area of the sky on which they would concentrate their research. Throughout the semester, he explained, he would give us the tools to understand everything we needed to know about the stars and other objects we'd be viewing, and our final research project would reflect our application of those tools to our chosen area. By the end, I was very pleased to be in this class.

No Jenna in the religion class either. There were only seventeen students in all, and the first three seats of the five rows were already occupied when I entered, each of them with a smartly dressed student wearing a pastel button-down shirt and either slacks, for the boys, or longish skirts, for the girls. I found a seat four back, next to the only other student who didn't look like she'd come from the same mold.

"Andrew Torres," I introduced myself as I sat down before the bell rang.

"Bianca DeSousa," she smiled shyly. Mrs. Kwan walked in then, frowning slightly at the rows of cookie-cutter classmates that Ms. Bhandari had warned me about when she'd signed me up for the class. She smiled at me and Bianca, clearly the class misfits, and began to lecture. She explained that we would be examining the Old Testament as history, putting various books — some historical, some prophetic — in the contest of their times. This was actually better than Sunday School. By the end, I was glad I was taking this class, too.

I finally met Jenna at lunch. It was after I'd stood in line, paid for my burger and fries, and stood stock-still at the door, realizing I had no idea where I was supposed to sit. My "usual" table — the one I'd been sitting at before Christmas, when I was in the ninth grade — was still in the same place. I recognized Eli Goldsworthy, who'd added maybe another inch in height but nothing in weight, and Adam Moreno, who had always been small for his age but seemed to finally be growing. And Conner DeLaurier, who used to whip my butt semi-regularly at chess, and Fiona Coyne who we adopted into our group when her twin brother Declan passed away in the eighth grade, she plays the clarinet. Next to them was the kid from Astronomy, the basketball guy, whose name suddenly came to me: K.C. Guthrie. I took two steps toward them before I realized that they were sitting with two more girls, a very obvious change from the table I'd left. One of them was Clare Edwards; the other was my sister, Imogen.

"Andrew!"

A shrill voice floated across the room, cutting through conversations like a knife through butter.

I looked around and found her, sitting at a table with Sadie Rowlands who was probably the cheerleader captain this year; Miles Hollingsworth, probably the captain of the tennis team, or maybe the golf team his sister Frankie Hollingsworth and Liam Berish, two more of the school's beautiful people. The girl who had called my name occupied the middle seat on one side of the table, with the seat across from her left open. I was dating the Queen Bee.

With a last glance at the horrified, curious faces of my former friends, I swallowed hard and approached the table to which I was apparently assigned. She was very pretty, in a sort of obvious way. Her long blonde hair curled around her head in a deliberate, almost practiced manner. Her blue eyes were surrounded by just enough makeup to emphasize her high cheekbones and full, red lips. Her hands were clasped together on the table, her fingernails the same blood-red that my little sister Maya had been using on Christmas morning. She tilted her head sideways as I came closer, waiting for something more than for me to take my seat across from her.

For the moment, though, that was all I was willing to do. "Jenna," I smiled at her. "How was your Christmas?" "How was my Christmas?" she spat at me, her lips suddenly growing thinner as she stretched them across a set of perfect teeth. "Where the fuck were you?" "At home?" I said. "With a broken cell phone, I assume?" she said. Other people couldn't help but notice us now; heads were popping up across the cafeteria, like grazing wildlife that become aware of danger to the herd but don't know yet which way to turn. "You know, I completely forgot to turn it on," I said. "Did you try my home phone?"

"God, Drew," Sadie chimed in, "that's so last century."

Jenna shut her up with a glance. "And this morning?" she demanded. "This morning," I nodded. "I took the bus." The entire table exploded with derisive laughter. "The point of having my father lease you a car," Jenna bored in on me, "was so that you could pick me up." "He leases cars to all the athletes," Frankie said before she realized she'd taken the wrong side and snapped her mouth shut. Even still, she got a full-second glare from Jenna before it swung back to me. "Are you trying to humiliate me in front of my friends?" Jenna asked. "Is that what you're trying to do? Break up with me? Maybe so you can try that little Half-breed Jew girl from your religion class?"

"I'm sorry, what?" I asked. Up until that instant, I could understand the attraction. She was attractive, impeccably attired, obviously well-connected. And she was a fucking bigot. The way she'd sneered out "Half-breed Jew girl" was so much the opposite of what my mother had taught me that I found myself on the verge of nausea. I couldn't believe I'd ever even started dating this woman; what the hell had I done with this life?

"You heard me, Drew," Jenna radiated hostility. I stood up.

"Where are you going?" Jenna's eyes grew big. "For air," I said quietly, trying to suppress the revulsion and anger that I was feeling, directed partly toward her but mostly at myself. "Nobody leaves me, Drew Torres," she lifted her head in an almost imperial gesture. "Sorry," I said. I left my tray right there and began walking out of the cafeteria, followed by every pair of eyes in the room. A few steps away, I took out my key ring, worked off the key to the Subaru, and put it in my right hand. Without breaking stride, I twisted my torso back and looked at the shocked faces at the table I'd just left.

"Here," I said quietly, flipping the key toward Jenna. It was a horrible toss, sailing over her head. Miles had to stand up to catch it for her. I continued on my way out through the silence.

That evening I was sitting on my bed, throwing a nerf baseball against the opposite wall. There was a soft knocking at the door, and Imogen stuck her head in. "Are you okay?" she asked, her eyes wide. "Yeah," I smiled. "You really broke up with Jenna Middleton?" she asked. "You were there," I grinned at her. "I found this on the floor outside my locker at the end of the day." I picked up the two pieces of a very nice leather jacket, sliced neatly up the back right through the felt "D." "And of course the car was gone," I said. She looked at me a little longer and then began to back out.

"Thanks, Imogen," I said. "For what?" she stuck her head back in. "For stopping by to ask," I smiled at her.

#############################

I would say that Thursday was nowhere near as eventful a day as Wednesday, but that would be obvious. I don't think I've had a day since that has been as eventful as that Wednesday was. In hindsight, of course, Thursday was not without its moments as well; it's just that in comparing them to Wednesday, anything short of a circus parading through the halls of the school was bound going to come up a little short.

Government was basically the same as the day before, although the other jocks were keeping their distance until they figured out how this whole thing was going to play out. I imagined that would pretty much take place when their girlfriends decided how it was going to play out and told them. History was the same as the day before. Mrs. Dawes's seminar held my interest, just as it had the day before, although I was acutely aware of the stares of every kid in the class on my neck. Astronomy was a little different; the brunette had dropped the class, probably afraid that being assigned as my lab partner would forever ruin her social standing at Degrassi Community School. So I sat at the bench by myself, exchanging greetings only with K.C., who turned out to be a real nice guy who was planning on going to Tech next year, until Clare showed up. And Religion was exactly the same. Fifteen eager beaver Christians, Bianca, and me.

I found a table by myself at lunch, and was eating in comfortable silence, looking up periodically to catch people quickly looking back at their own lunches, when I became aware that someone had stopped in front of me.

"Is this seat taken?" Bianca asked. "That seat?" I laughed. "Nope. That one isn't either, though. Or that one, or... I'm sorry, no. Will you join me?" I stood up as she pulled out her chair, something my mother had taught me long ago but which seemed to set off another round of stares. She seated herself, I sat back down, and we started eating. "So you don't mind sitting with a —" she started.

"Shut up," I interrupted her savagely. She froze, her fork poised halfway between her mouth and plate. "What is this the 40's? If you start thinking of yourself like that," I said, "as something that begins with 'a' — a member of this group or that group, a cheerleader, a flute player — you're really no different from them, are you?"

Both of us knew who I meant by "them."

"And I'll get up and leave you, too," I told her when she still hadn't moved. "But no, I don't mind sitting with Bianca, er, Bianca..." "DeSousa," she giggled. "Exactly," I said.

We talked about the school she'd transferred from at the beginning of the previous semester, and we talked about our religion class. She was a little nervous when I asked her why she was taking it, because the answer involved her religion and she was afraid that I'd storm off. Eventually she explained that her parents had vociferously objected to a religious class in school, but that Mrs. Kwan herself had asked Bianca to enroll, in order to prevent the class from becoming just another session of Sunday School for the other kids. She told me that she had been very pleased to see me there on the first day.

The bell rang, and we parted as friends. I liked Bianca DeSousa. Four or five or eight years from now, when I started thinking about dating again, I might ask her out.

Lunch had not only been enjoyable, it had been an excellent distraction. But it eventually ended, and I got even closer to what I had been dreading ever since the night before, my seventh period debut as an experienced baseball pitcher. The "Baseball for Dummies" book had been very helpful; I had a good grasp of the game and its rules; its history and traditions; and the basic principles of pitching, defense, and base running.

I had been trusting, though, that the muscles of my arm and fingers would retain the memory of how to grip the ball and throw it, because I had no clue. And I had been dismayed to learn that I wasn't alone. The arm and fingers were just as ignorant. I'd gone out to the ball field the night before by myself, just before twilight. My room was full of baseballs, and I brought five or six of them with me. Standing on the mound, I hefted one in my right hand, hoping to identify the place that my fingers rested. I looked into the book in the fading light, trying to match my fingers with the ones in the picture. Finally, in desperation, I simply rocked back and hurled the ball toward the backstop. It hit the metal backstop and, its momentum spent, dropped straight down. If that was a 95 mile per hour fastball, the cars that were whizzing by on the road behind me were averaging 250 miles an hour. I threw another one; it hit the ground six feet in front of the plate. I threw a third; it sailed high. I kept throwing until there was no more light, with no better success.

"Coach," I said when I reported to him in his office at the end of sixth period, "I think the arm's a little sore today." He watched me swing my right arm around while I grimaced, and he gave me a look of utter stupefaction. "Just get into your gym clothes," he finally told me. I reluctantly did as I was ordered, and emerged into the gym to find Adam Moreno, my old, slightly chubby friend, dressed in a catcher's mask and padding, standing with the coach and another man in jeans. A bucket of baseballs rested on the ground beside them. "This is Felix Carson," Coach said as I approached. "He's a scout for the Orioles. Andy, this is Drew Torres."

"Heard a lot about you, son," the man said in a Southern drawl as he crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Lookin' forward to seein' you do some throwin.'" "You and me both, I thought. "Don't worry, Drew," Coach said, reacting to the look on my face. "He understands you haven't started real workouts yet. Just toss a couple to Adam." "Hey, Adam," I said. "Andrew," he nodded. "I mean Drew."

Adam was apparently not my regular catcher, because when he paced off the appropriate distance and dropped into his crouch, he looked like he was ready to dive off to the side and bail out on me at any moment. I took the ball from Coach Stone and turned it over in my hand. "Coach?" I finally said, ready to start my confession. "Where's your glove, son?" he asked me suddenly. "Uh," I stammered. Coach looked at the scout and shook his head. "Kids," he muttered. "I'll get it."

"I saw some film of you from last year, son," Mr. Mastring smiled after Coach had jogged back into the locker room. "You got a lotta potential." "Yeah, see, about that," I began. "Here you go!" I turned around to see a glove flying at me, and snatched it out of the air with my right hand. I recognized almost instantly that it was a glove for the right hand. "But I'm, uh, right-handed," I murmured, pulling the glove on and noticing how well it fit, how snugly my fingers slipped into the individual holes, how the middle finger rested on the outside of the glove underneath the strap. "Yeah, I don't understand it either," Coach Stone tried to share a laugh with the puzzled scout. "And nobody else can explain it to me. I've had doctors look at it, orthopedists. He does everything with his right hand except throw."

While he was talking I had picked up a ball with my left hand, working it around, feeling the way each of the seams fell against calluses that I hadn't noticed over the past week. I was a goddamn lefty. "You gonna throw it, son?" the scout asked after a while. "Yeah," I probably had a goofy grin on my face. "Yeah, ya know I think I will." I turned my right side to Adam, exactly the opposite of what I'd tried to do the evening before. My body actually did remember; I just hadn't given it the right cue before. I came to a set, brought my right leg back, pushed forward, and fired the ball into the glove that Adam was holding in front of him like a shield. The impact drove the glove backward into his chest, and knocked him back against the wooden stands that were folded back against the wall.

"Easy, Drew," Coach said sharply. "Adam's not ready for the season yet either." "Sorry!" I yelled down to Adam, who was reluctantly assuming his crouch once again. Like hell I was. Still, I tossed the next one in softer, and the next one softer than that. "Show him your change," Coach smiled at the scout. "He already did," Mr. Mastring looked back at him with a big grin on his face. "Goddamn, son, what was that, mid '70s?" How the hell did I know? What was I, a frickin' speedometer? I did know, though, that with the changeup, as long as it looked like a fastball to the hitter, slower was better. "Maybe," I nodded. "Probably a little higher. I still got some work to do this year." "Not much, buddy," he clapped me on the shoulder and shook his head. "I'm afraid we may not pick high enough this year for a chance at you. And we pick fifth. Thanks, Peter."

"Sure, Felix," Coach smiled at him, happy that "we" had been successful. "Good job, Drew. Thanks, Adam! That's all!" They walked toward the office as I waited for Adam. "What the hell were you trying to do?" he asked me. "It's gonna take me two more months before I can catch that heater." "Sorry, man," I answered. "I honestly thought it would take me longer than that to throw it again." "So you really broke up with that bi—" he started to ask before his eyes suddenly widened and he clammed up. "Couldn't quite hear ya there, Adam?" I grinned at him. "But yeah." "Back among the peons, huh?" he grinned back. "Nah, not that low, Adam," I said as we both laughed.

I finished my paper for Mrs. Dawes that evening, and the rest of my homework along with it. I was in a very good mood the next day, and even walked to lunch with Bianca after our fifth period class. Her "usual" table turned out to be a bunch of yearbook geeks, so I companionably ate with them while they peppered me with questions about baseball. As little as I knew, it was still more than they knew. I actually went to bed Friday night a fairly contented young man.

Life is still slow sometimes, even when you take it three years at a time.


	8. Knows

Thank you to what reviews I have gotten, people must not be reading too much fanfics these days I guess. I still have hope, enjoy!

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**_"No one knows what it's like, to be hated, to be fated, to telling only lies, but my dreams, they aren't as empty, as my conscience seems to be" ~The Who_  
**

**8**

"Shopping!" I yelled as I banged on Imogen's door at ten o'clock the next morning. "What do you want?" she threw the door open and glared at me. "Shopping trip," I dangled a set of keys in front of her. "Whose car?" she asked. "Paige's," I told her. "She told me to borrow it any time." "So you didn't actually ask her?" "She didn't actually get up yet," I shrugged. Imogen rolled her eyes at me. "Where are we going?" she asked. "For me?" I said. "Church clothes. For you? It's a surprise." Despite her suspicions, she got her purse and coat and followed me out to the car. I quickly hustled around to the passenger side. "The mall, driver," I ordered, feigning sleep once again. She approved my church clothes — a new suit, a sports coat, a couple of ties, a new pair of slacks, and three new button-down shirts — and then I walked her down to the other end of the mall.

"Where are we going?" she asked. "In here," I said. "The optometrist's office?" she asked. "When was the last time you went?" I asked her. "Couple of years," she mumbled. "Time for some new glasses, then," I said. "You said the other day that God knows I could afford to buy some nice clothes. And you were right."

Was she ever. Apparently I'd gotten some cushy summer jobs the past few years, no doubt with one of the town's sports boosters, because I had over seven grand in my checking account. "So now I want to spend some on you," I told her, pushing her into the store. It took a little more discussion, but when she saw how lightweight the new transitional lenses were, even for prescriptions as strong as hers, and how attractive she looked in different 'cat-eyed' frames, she finally let me buy them for her.

She liked the next stop even more, a used car lot where I bought an automatic 2005 Matrix for $1,200. "Why should I take twelve hundred bucks when it's priced at fifteen?" the salesman had smiled at me. "Because I've got twelve right here in my wallet," I smiled back at him, "and before I tried it out, that car hadn't been off the lot in a month and a half." My smile grew a little bigger, his a little smaller, and I owned a car. Actually, Imogen and I owned a car, because I registered it in both of our names. "Two weeks," I said as I threw her the keys and got in the passenger side. "For what?" she laughed. "Your next driver test. Home, Jeeves."

She drove us both to church on Sunday morning. And then sat up front with Clare. I sat in the back, keeping to myself.

############################

If we'd had an impartial referee, I have no doubt that the contest would have been declared a complete and total mismatch and never allowed to begin. As it was, it was nearly over before I even realized that it had started. In one corner, you had a sophisticated high school senior, a seductress who had spent the last three years navigating her way through the complex social webs that connect the various groups at a suburban high school. In the other corner, a ninth-grade naïf who had no memory of how he had spent those same three years. I was doomed.

In retrospect, of course, Saturday and Sunday had probably been my last chance to sue for peace, or more accurately to grovel before the throne of Jenna Middleton. A simple apology might have sufficed on Thursday or Friday, although I might have hurt my chances for that by sitting with Bianca DeSousa at lunch both days. By Saturday, though, that ship had undoubtedly sailed. As it was, I spent both days, Saturday and Sunday, watching the NFL playoffs. And in any event, I hadn't entertained any idea at all of apologizing, let alone groveling. With no idea what kind of relationship Jenna and I had had before Christmas, my impression of her was based entirely on our single encounter in the cafeteria on Wednesday, and as far as I was concerned, it wasn't a relationship I saw any reason to continue.

Monday started on a high note, a very high note, although I did have to wait until third period. I had already figured out that that was probably going to be true every day. There weren't likely to be high notes during first or second period. In Government, I was quickly learning that Mr. Townsend was happy if you copied down everything he said during class, mostly from the way he paused to let us keep up with his pearls of wisdom. I had every expectation that the tests would require that and little more; as long as you knew what a bicameral legislature was, it didn't really matter whether you knew why the Founding Fathers thought it would be a good idea. A cynical view, sure, and one based on only three classes, but I was fairly confident it would hold up. Mr. Perino's history class was a little better, but I still had the feeling that we were going through the motions of rote learning. Here, for example, is where you needed to know that the Founding Fathers wanted a bicameral legislature. You just didn't need to understand what it was. Third period was when the day started to get interesting.

I'd read "Bartleby" over the weekend, but Ms. Dawes started class by asking those of us with front row seats to pass back a Xeroxed paper that she was handing out. I took one and turned around to hand the stack to Becky, who gave me a little smirk and snatched them from my hand, apparently upset now that I had one of her jobs, that of the first passer-backer. I turned back to my seat and was mortified to see my own handwriting on the piece of paper that Ms. Dawes had been distributing. I looked up to find her standing directly over my desk, just in case anyone had missed my name scrawled across the top of the essay.

"Mr. Torres has favored us with his attendance for the fourth day in a row," she said to giggles from the class. "A season-best, if I'm not mistaken, Mr. Torres?" "Yes, ma'am," I felt my face flushing with heat. "As well as an excellent example of the kind of essay I was looking for," she pulled me back from the edge of humiliation. "He selected a single fact from Melville's life, the scarlet fever from which he suffered as a young boy. From that, he created a hypothesis, that Melville would feel more sympathetic — although I believe a better word would have been empathetic, Mr. Torres — toward the weak and downtrodden in society, toward people whose afflictions might make others view them with pity, or even with scorn. And in his next paragraph, he explained what he would look for in Melville's work to support his hypothesis. Beyond that, he did me one better; he explained what he would look for to dispute his hypothesis. I would ask him to read his paragraph to you, but I've embarrassed him enough already and you're all perfectly capable of reading. What some of you are going to need practice on is writing. Miss Smith, did you read the Bartleby?" With that, we plunged into a discussion of "Bartleby, the Scrivener." At the end of class, Mrs. Dawes passed back the papers, and mine had a red A-plus circled in red. All right! I was on my way. Let the games begin.

Without my knowledge, though, a different game had already begun. By the time I got to lunch, not only had Bianca run out of Religion before I could even turn to talk to her after the bell, but the radioactivity of my table had spread to all the surrounding tables as well. With Bianca's table full, and with its occupants, like the rest of the crowd, glancing at me with expressions that ranged from discomfort to outright hostility, I simply reclaimed the seat I'd taken on Thursday. After a few minutes, I realized that nobody was sitting within twenty feet of me. Some people, in fact, left the cafeteria altogether when all of the other tables — the ones not near me — had filled up.

I'd been getting dirty looks from other people all morning, growing in number and intensity as I passed through my classes, but I just shrugged them off. Sure, Jenna was obviously a popular girl. Sure, I was going to have to suffer a little purgatory for breaking up with her. But I was a popular guy, too, right? I mean, I was a star athlete. So eventually, the little Jenna circle would go its way, and my little jock circle would come around my way, and things would settle down to normal. As I looked around the cafeteria, though, I had the distinct feeling that that was going to take a little longer than I thought.

I spent the rest of the day in study hall, trying to figure out the retrograde motion of Venus, something that Mr. Betenkemp had started lecturing on today, and that nobody else seemed to have as much trouble with as I did. It took me the rest of the afternoon to figure out, interrupted only a summons from Coach Stone to remind me that "we" had a tryout for a scout from the Atlanta Braves tomorrow afternoon.

Even my own family was cool toward me. Imogen had eagerly accepted my offer to drive our car to school on Monday morning, and had expertly placed the car in the seniors' parking lot. After school, though, on my way to the lot, I watched as she almost ran to the line of buses. Thinking that perhaps she'd just forgotten we drove in together, I managed to drive myself home without, as far as I knew, breaking any laws. Dinner that evening was no different than "usual." As we had every evening since the day after Christmas, we all listened to Paige describing in minute detail what she did during the day and how the pregnancy was affecting every organ of her body. Since the organs under discussion invariably included her boobs — their growing size in particular — it wasn't a subject that drove me from the table as quickly as it usually did Imogen and Maya. This time, though, they departed with even more haste than usual, both of them glaring at me as they retreated to their rooms. After I'd done the dishes — without Imogen's help this time — I knocked on her door. No answer. I called her name. Still no answer.

I was seriously bummed. This was the week that I was going to start tracking down the mystery of life. Or at least the mystery of my life. Who the hell was Andrew Torres, and how the hell did he get that way? I already had a pretty good answer to the first question. He was an arrogant asshole who said "That was great, baby" to a woman he'd adored since the seventh grade, and who'd dumped Clare Edwards when she wouldn't put out. He'd had at least one affair with a married woman, and at least one session with his current stepmother, I hoped to God before she married to his dad. He hadn't visited his relatives in a year and a half, and, oh yeah, he'd been dating a bigot.

How he got that way, though, was a little more difficult to figure out. I figured that Imogen would be the best source of information, and while I had no intention of actually telling her the truth, I kind of hoped that if I enlisted her aid in my reformation project, I could sneak in a few questions about the downward spiral that my life had taken in the last three years.

I hadn't broached the subject up until now because frankly, I hadn't had the time. I think it was Socrates who said that the unexamined life isn't worth living. Easy for him; he didn't also have to spend time examining physics and baseball and American history, not to mention writing a paper on T.S. Elliot's "Murder in the Cathedral." And in any event, I think what he had in mind was an examination that was a little more introspective than I was capable of at the moment; with respect to the last three years, at any rate, I was solely depended on extrospection, or whatever the opposite of introspection is. And of course, that was dependent on Imogen's actually talking to me. For the life of me, I just couldn't understand why my breaking up with Jenna would make Imogen mad. The way she'd said Jenna's name when we were waiting for the bus last week, in fact, had led me to believe that she would welcome my breaking up with her.

Maya's reaction was a little easier to understand. She was more than likely the Queen Bee of her own class, and my horrible faux pas had probably, through some strange commutative property of high school transference, been considered some sort of reflection on her. I didn't know that for a fact, though, because I still hadn't really gotten to know Maya yet. She'd obviously grown up, as evidenced by the fact that she'd had dates every night between Christmas and the start of the school year. And not with the same guy, either; I don't think I'd seen the same car yet pull into the driveway and honk its horn to summon my hot youngest sister. Since school started, we simply hadn't been in the same room long enough for me to start up a casual conversation about the last three years of her life.

Imogen continued to scorn me the next morning. She responded to my offer to once again let her drive our car to school by turning her back on me and walking to the bus stop. I was unwilling to drive myself in, so I hurried after her. Once on the bus, I found all the other kids turning their heads to look out the window as I walked down the aisle. Even Dave Turner, who'd made a complete nuisance of himself the week before by sitting in front of me and explaining his athletic prowess every morning, found a seat at the front of the bus.

The rest of the morning followed a similar course. Nobody would initiate a conversation with me, and the responses to my own openings were brushed aside as quickly as possible. Bianca, in fact, bluntly told me to "fuck off" when I tried to talk to her before Religion Class. As a result, the only people I really talked to on Tuesday were Coach Stone, and the guy from the Braves. Even Adam Moreno, whom I didn't knock backward this time when he caught my tryout, responded to my banter only with grunts and single-word answers.

By Wednesday, it had spread to the faculty. Mr. Perino and Mr. Townsend both looked at me like I was the lowest form of life on earth, and Mrs. Dawes refused to look at me at all. Mrs. Kwan met my eyes in Religion, but her eyes were filled with such pain and such disappointment that I found myself unable to hold her gaze for any length of time. Mr. Betenkamp spoke to me, but only because we had lab on Wednesdays and he had to assign me a lab partner. Or assign me no lab partner, as it turned out. My classmates were already sitting next to their first choice in lab partners, and he eagerly ratified their choices. "Mr. Torres," he uncomfortably turned to me after going through the rest of the class, "because we have an odd number of students this year, it seems that you'll have to do your lab work by yourself. I assume that won't be a problem." "No, sir," I shrugged. "I kinda figured that after, um, the other girl I'd been sitting next to dropped the class."

"Good, very good," he dismissed me from his mind. "Now about next week, class, I told you that I wanted each pair of you, or just you, Mr. Torres, to look for a particular area of the night-time sky to focus your studies. We're going to continue with the planets of the solar system for the next two weeks, and after that we'll start looking at our own sun as an introduction to the stars. So some of you won't really have a lot of information on which to base your selection." He pulled down a picture of the sky from a set of rolled-up maps that hung above the board in the front of the room. "Now I know," he continued, "that some of you are already familiar with the heavens, and that places like the Horsehead Nebula are going to be quite popular. So I'll warn you right now, if more than one set of partners —" he gestured at me as if he wanted to continue reminding everyone that I didn't have a lab partner "— picks the same general area, we'll have a drawing for that one." "So what are we supposed to be looking for?" asked a kid from the other side of the room. "Pretty much any area will have enough of interest in it to allow you to complete the project I have in mind," Mr. Betenkamp answered. "If it doesn't, I'll let you know."

"So what if we find life there?" asked Julian Williams. Julian had been the class clown since we were in the seventh grade together. He was a pretty smart guy, too, although he never missed an opportunity to get a laugh. "If you find life," Mr. Betenkamp gave Teddy his chuckle, "I'll give you an A-plus on the spot. Yes, Judy?" "How do we identify the area for you?" Judy Wilson asked. "Aah, an excellent question," the teacher answered. "A single star will suffice. If you give me a single star, we will consider your area to be everything that we can see when we center the school's telescope on that star. In fact, the following Wednesday, I will provide you each with photographs of your areas."

The bell rang and we all got up.

"Oh, one other thing," he said as we were leaving. "Make sure your star appears in the evening sky. I don't want to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to take pictures for you. If you have any questions, the room's open first and seventh periods." I had nothing better to do the next period, so I remained in the lab while everybody else, including Mr. Betenkamp, filed out. I was looking at the star chart, trying to figure out some rational basis for my choice, when he came back in.

"Oh, Andrew," he was clearly discomfited by my presence. "Can I help you?" "Just trying to pick a star, sir," I smiled at him. "Oh, well, carry on," he said. "I just need to collect some papers." So I carried on, turning my attention back to the chart. "Andrew," he said quietly after a few minutes. "Sir?" I turned around. "Have you considered transferring to another school, Andrew?" "Another school?" I was dumbfounded. "Why?" "Because of your recent, er, notoriety."

I had no idea what the word meant, but it didn't sound good. Particularly if it was something that would make me think about leaving Degrassi. "You mean because I broke up with Jenna," I paused a few seconds, trying to remember what Imogen had said her last name was, "Middleton in the cafeteria last week? You mean because I threw her my car keys?" "Because your attitude toward women has become so, er, well known," he said. "My attitude?" I was treading carefully now. My attitude toward women at the current moment was exactly what it had been in ninth grade — extreme bafflement. On the hand, I had no idea what attitude I'd exhibited over the last three years. "I think we both know what we're talking about, Andrew," he gave me a patronizing smile as he collected his papers and prepared to leave. "Just give it some thought."

"Yes, sir," I nodded slowly.

By Thursday, I simply couldn't take it anymore. After another day of silence and sneers, even dinner itself was ominously quiet. had apparently caught wind of whatever was going around; and whenever she found me looking at her, she simply shook her head and returned to her food. After Imogen had run off to her room, I excused myself and followed her. "Imogen!" I said, rapping hard on her door. "Imogen, I need to talk to you." "Fuck off!" came her muffled response. "Imogen," I said, "I'm gonna stand here all night until you talk to me." A few seconds later, I heard the creaking of her bed, followed by the shuffling of her feet on the carpet and the click of her door unlocking. "What?" she asked, cracking the door open.

"Are you okay?" I asked. Her eyes were red, her face stained with tears. "Of course I'm not okay, you asshole," she spat. "You think it's easy being the sister of the school perv?" "The school perv?" I asked. "Look, I don't even know what Jenna is saying I did!" She stared into my eyes, apparently thinking the truth was buried somewhere in there. "I don't believe you," she said. I stuck my foot in the door just before she tried to slam it closed. "Imogen!" I protested softly. "All right," she said. "Just answer one question. Did you ever make a videotape of you and Jenna fucking?"

I stared at her, my mouth opening and closing like a fish.

"Ya know," she said. "I kind of hoped you could at least deny that. Now get out." I let her push me backwards and slam the door in my face. As I walked numbly back to my room, I wondered whether it was the tape itself that upset everyone or whether it was something on the tape. Probably both. Back in my room, I searched my computer for all of the video files I could think of. Other than a bunch of porno clips that "I" had saved — none of them starring me — I drew a complete blank.

It wasn't until Saturday that I found out.

If anything, Friday was worse than the day before. The stares had turned from disdainful to malevolent, as if the concentrated telekinetic power of the entire high school could make me drop dead where I stood.

The only ray of hope was a note I found in my locker at the end of the day: "Let's throw tomorrow at Sunrise Hill Park at 10. EG."


	9. Hinges

_**"Screen falling off the door door hanging off the hinges, my feet are still sore my back is on the fringes, we tore up the walls we slept on couches, we lifted this house we lifted this house." ~Walk the Moon**_

**9**

Eli Goldsworthy was waiting for me in the bleachers at Sunrise Hill Park.

"Where's your glove?" I asked him as I approached. It had been a very odd winter so far; it was already January 13, and we still hadn't had any snow to speak of. So I actually thought the note was sincere. I sat down next to him in the bleachers. "I didn't want to throw," he said quietly. "Some of the guys on the team just wanted me to tell you they're behind you." "Pretty damn far behind," I pointed out. "True," he acknowledged. "They all have girlfriends. And they're not about to give them up for you." "Will somebody for God's sake tell me why?" I answered, near tears myself.

"For what it's worth," he said. "Clare doesn't believe it." "Clare Edwards?" I asked him. He nodded. "Are you and she, uh..." I began. "We're just friends," he said. "But I'd never get another date with any other girl that saw me here talking to you." "WHY?" I almost screamed at him. "Clare told me that you're an arrogant asshole," he said, "but she says there's no way you would hit a woman." "Hit a woman?" I gasped. "Jenna's saying I hit her?" He turned away from me and stared out toward center field, steeling himself. After a deep breath he turned back.

"She says you were physically and verbally abusive," he said. "That you slapped her, that you choked her, that you spit in her face, and that you called her a cock-sucking whore." I could hear my heart hammering in my chest, and I knew that Eli was waiting, just as Imogen had waited on Thursday night, for me to deny it. "I would never," I said, "ever. I couldn't." I suddenly realized that this was the "attitude" Mr. Betenkamp had been talking about. But no matter how much I'd changed in the three years since Christmas Eve, 2010, there was simply no way that I would ever start treating a woman like that. Finally, I became aware that Eli was talking again.

"Apparently, none of your other former girlfriends think you could do it," he said. "It's not like they were going to join your fan club, though, after you kind of worked your way up through them to Jenna." "Eli," I said. "You have to believe me. I'd never do anything like that." He looked at me and nodded. "Hannah claims there's a video," he said. "Hannah?" I asked. "Hannah Belmont," he said, as if I should know her. "Jenna's best friend? Apparently you pissed her off in science class last week." No doubt Hannah was the hot red-head, my one-time future lab partner in Astronomy.

"Has she seen a video?" I asked. "She won't say," Eli shook his head. "But she says that Jenna just has a clip, which you e-mailed her after you shot it." "Eli," I implored him. "Yeah, I know man," he nodded. "I can get the word out that you deny the whole thing, including the taping, and that the team supports you. But at this point everybody thinks Jenna has a clip." "But she can't!" I protested. If she did I might as well just shoot myself right now. He shrugged. "This ain't Law and Order, man," he said. "They don't need to see it to believe it. Oh, shit. One other thing. Completely different subject."

I sat there waiting.

"You're sister Imogen's lookin' pretty nice these days," he said. "And?" I asked, suspiciously. "And, uh, Fiona wants to ask her out," he said after a pause. I was shocked, but cool. "So tell her to ask her out, when did Fi come out anyway? Does Imogen like girls?" I said. "You know she came out 2 years ago, remember? But that's why Fiona wanted me to be the one to ask, to find out." Eli said. I just shook my head, of course I'm supposed to know that. "So tell her to ask Clare," I said. Wasn't that how these things were normally done? "Clare told her to stop being such a baby and ask her out, something about women power." Eli smiled. "So she came to you?" I asked. "And you didn't tell her the same thing?" "Fiona and I have been friends since second grade, she's not put herself out there much since Declan died." he said. "I told her I'd ask you." I was about to repeat my earlier advice, which corresponded so perfectly with Clare's, but I figured I owed Eli. And if the price of his conversation with me was finding out if my sister would accept a date with Fiona Coyne, I could do that. I just nodded. Eli clapped me on the shoulder and left me sitting in the bleachers. I slowly walked home. On the one hand, I at least knew now what I was being accused of. I just didn't know what I'd done.

Clare drove Imogen to church the next day, and I drove myself, becoming more and more comfortable with the act of driving. I sat at the very back. The Episcopalian confession of sins requires that we ask God to forgive us for those things that we have done, as well as those things that we have left undone. To it, I appended my own fervent prayer that He be a little more specific about exactly what those things were.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

I spent Monday, the MLK holiday, hiding in my room, playing the games I'd discovered on my computer over the weekend. Fortunately, that basically killed the whole day.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay there all week, and it was a lonely drive to school on Tuesday without Imogen. When I got out of my car in the seniors' parking lot — I was actually doing pretty good with this driving stuff now — I noticed Bianca DeSousa standing at the door to the school. As I approached, I wondered how someone could look that beautiful and miserable at the same time.

I hadn't really had a good chance to admire Bianca from afar before. When we were speaking — two weeks ago now — she was sitting down next to me, sitting down across from me, or standing next to me while we walked to the cafeteria or waited in line. I knew she was fairly about 5'7" or even a little taller. Her long hair was a beautiful black, the result of her Portugal heritage. She was slender, with breasts that didn't so much call attention to themselves as they called attention to the entire package. It was only now, though, as she stood there, apparently waiting for someone — me? — That I could appreciate how well put together that package was. Even wrapped in a red winter parka against the cold, even with a long navy blue skirt that almost completely hid her legs from sight, she took my breath away.

"Hey," I said hesitantly as I took the steps two at a time. "Can I talk to you a minute?" she asked, speaking even more hesitantly than I had. "Sure," I said. The steps leading to the entrance of the school were stone, and Bianca was leaning on the foot thick stone railing running up each side of them. I sat down on the cold stone, and she sat down next to me.

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry," she said. "Okay," I nodded, when it looked like she was expecting an answer. "I'd only known you for three days," she said, "and when they started telling those stories about you, I didn't know what to believe. I should have just asked you." She'd hung her head during most of her apology, but now she was looking up at me through impossibly long eyelashes.

"That's okay," I finally blurted out, the chill air turning my exhalation into a white wisp that dissolved above her hair. "One of my friends said that you were denying the whole thing," she continued, "and I realized that all that video crap was just so much talk, and that I should have had a little more faith in you." I smiled down at her. "Since we're in Religion together?" I joked. She gave me the beginnings of a grin. "So we're still friends?" I asked. "Still friends," she offered me her hand for a shake. At that moment, I wanted nothing more than to crush her against me and kiss her, but I accepted the handshake. I walked her in to her locker, and continued on to mine, much happier than when I'd gotten out of my car.

It certainly wasn't a complete thaw of last week's freeze-out. I got a few hand-slaps in Government, but by the time I reached Ms. Dawes's third period seminar, it was clear that the tide was running against me. She twice ignored my hand during our continuing discussion of Bartleby, just as Mr. Betenkamp curtly accepted my identification of Gamma Cassiopeia as the subject of my research project. In contrast, when K.C. and Clare, sitting in front of me, selected the star Pollux, in the constellation Gemini, you'd think they'd just discovered another planet.

Mrs. Kwan, on the other hand, clearly wanted to believe me. We were still discussing the book of Genesis, having spent most of last week arguing over her decision to call it a "creation story," which most of the class interpreted as giving it the same weight as the Hindu creation story or even, God forbid, the Navajo creation story. Mrs. Kwan, God bless her, had refused to knuckle under, and the discussion had been lively and even heated. Finally, though, she turned to me.

"Mr. Torres," she said, "tell us about Noah." Needless to say, I didn't get very far as a solo artist. It soon became a duet, and then a trio, and then a symphony, with even Bianca offering her opinion. Bianca walked me to lunch, and sat with me at "my table," but nobody else joined us. At one point, I caught a glimpse of Jenna holding court on the opposite side of the cafeteria. She looked up to see me looking at her, and gave me a look that was filled with triumphant malice.

The worst part was that Imogen refused to come around. I spent another quiet dinner hour that evening under the glares of three Torres women.

Wednesday was yet another day in the cold war. Its high point was Clare Edwards turning around to me in Astronomy just before the bell rang. "Are you okay?" she asked. "Yes, I'm fine," I nodded. "I —"

The bell rang and she turned around immediately. Or perhaps she turned around and then the bell rang. I like to think it was the former. The only disturbing news of the day came during seventh period, when I got a note from Coach Stone indicating that my tryout the following day, with a scout from the St. Louis Cardinals, had been canceled. I thought nothing of it at the time; probably he was just delayed somewhere and we would reschedule it when he was free. After all, it wasn't like I was going to be going anywhere.

That cancellation however was like the crocuses in spring — a small but certain promise of things to come. On Thursday, Coach Stone caught me as I came out of Astronomy class and brought me back to his office. "I got bad news, Drew," he said when we were finally alone and he had brushed off my protests that I had a Religion class for which I was going to be late. I had become almost inured to bad news recently, so I stoically sat there across from him and waited for him to begin.

"Look, kid," he finally said after a long pause, "I'm not gonna sugarcoat this. Auburn and Alabama have both withdrawn their scholarship offers." "What?" I asked, my heart once again pounding in my chest. "I dunno," he said. "I kind of thought this whole thing you and your girl got into would just blow over, like any other high school thing. Because you know, I didn't want to believe that you did anything like what they were saying, you know?"

I nodded.

"But somebody's been talking to the coaches at these schools," he said. "I got calls into 'em, but you know, I don't really know these guys, just the scouts that showed up at our games last spring. So I can tell 'em you're denying the whole thing — you are, right? That's what Eli told me." "Yes, sir," I choked out. "Good," he nodded. "But they got no reason to believe me, and somebody's already told 'em your girl's side." "Who would do that?" I asked. "Somebody you pissed off," he shrugged. "But who would they listen to?" I continued.

"That's a good question," he said. He'd been sort of rocking back and forth in his little swivel chair, and now he stopped and sat up, as if it hadn't occurred to him before. "Somebody you pissed off who's pretty well connected. Got any ideas?" Of course I didn't. I had no idea who I'd pissed off over the last three years. I didn't even know who my friends were, let alone my enemies.

"Oh, Jesus, I know who it is," he finally said after a minute's thought. "Oh, God, kid, I'm afraid you may be well and truly fucked." "Who?" "Middleton," he said. "Your girl's dad. 'Claude.'" "The car dealer?" I asked. "Yeah," he nodded. "That asshole's tied into booster clubs all over the country. I think he might of even gone to one of these schools. Damn it!"

He pounded his fist down on the desk, nearly making me jump out of my seat. We both sat in silence; Coach was obviously racking his brain to see if he could figure any way out of this, while, for my part, I was just a stunned observer, caught halfway between the idea that this was happening to me and the idea that it was happening to someone else who I just happened to be watching. "Just let me think, Drew," he said. "Make some phone calls. I'm just a gym teacher and a baseball coach. This is way outta my league. But let me see."

"Sure, Coach," I said. I got up and numbly walked down the hall. As I approached Mrs. Kwan's class, I realized that I didn't have a note to excuse my absence. I retraced my steps to the gym, but Coach was nowhere around. By that point, it was already twenty minutes into fifth period, and I just gave up. I was going home, the hell with this crap.

I slowly shuffled down the deserted hallways to my locker to dump off my books. When I opened it, though, I found a note inside: "Meet me at the mall, in the Cinnabon, at 4:30 this afternoon, very important. AB."

I stood there in the hallway, my locker open in front of me, racking my brain to remember an AB. After five minutes without any success, I just dumped all my books in my locker and started wandering the halls. Twenty minutes later I was still there when the bell went off to signal the end of the period and the classes burst into the hallway in the race for the cafeteria.

By then, I'd decided to spend my sixth period study hall in the library, looking over old yearbooks. In the meantime, though, I had to sit through lunch. I got my food and took my table, and then spotted Bianca coming out of the serving line with her own tray. I caught her eye and smiled, nodding at the chair opposite me, but it became clear that she'd really rather be somewhere else. Finally, though, she walked over and slowly sat down across from me. "If you lied to me, I will never speak to you again," she said quietly. I noticed that she'd been crying.

"What happened?" I asked her. "Hannah Belmont," she gasped, "came up to me in third period, and told me, in front of everybody in the class, that she'd seen the little video she said you sent Jenna, and she couldn't believe that I'd want anything more to do with you." "I swear," I said with as much conviction as I could, "I would never tape a girl, ever." She gave me a long look, as if she could see deep into my soul. Finally, she nodded. "Okay," she said. "But like I told you..."

Now it was my turn to nod. Fifteen minutes later, though, when neither one of us had said a word to each other and our lunches were turning cold on their trays, I excused myself, and heard her sigh as I got up to leave the table.

I got to the mall at four-fifteen, having completely failed to figure out who needed to see me outside of school that badly. Aaron Beck was a lowlife jerk who was rumored to deal in drugs. If he wanted to see me, I was probably in more trouble than I thought. Annabelle Brahm was an airheaded Jenna wannabe; I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that I'd dated her at some point over the last three years, particularly given the remark Eli had dropped about my "working my way up" to Jenna. But ever since we'd been in fourth grade together, she'd demanded to be called Annie, and it would have been odd if she'd dropped that in the past three years. There were also juniors and seniors in the book with those initials, but I didn't know any of them. So I would just have to wait to find out.

I scanned the mall, trying to pick out a face that I recognized from school. There were so many kids, though, and so many that I didn't really know anymore, that I quickly gave it up. I looked down at my watch — 4:40 — and looked back up to see a woman standing in front of me, taking off her winter coat, her stylish pink hat, and her giant white sunglasses.

"Ms. Bhandari!" I yelped. "You're AB?" "Alli Bhandari," she said as she pulled out the chair opposite me and sat down even before I could stand up to greet her. "I don't have a lot of time, Andrew," she went on, glancing up and down the mall as she talked. "I told them I have a doctor's appointment and they want me back at 5:30." "Who?" I asked. "What are you talking about?" "Andrew, they're going to try to have you expelled," she said bluntly.


	10. Fear

_**"Do you ever get that fear that you can't shift, the type that sticks around like summat in your teeth? Are there some aces up your sleeve? Have you no idea that you're in deep?" Arctic Monkeys**_

**10**

"What?" I whispered.

"I've been typing up the papers and assembling the packet this afternoon," she continued as she scanned the mall. "They're going to notify you tomorrow after school." "Expel me!" the words shot out of my mouth in an explosion. "What the hell for?" "'For conduct that disrupts the learning process, '" she quoted. "But I haven't done anything," I protested.

"Shhhh," she silenced me. "I know that. Actually, they know it, too. When they heard rumors about this video clip today — they being Mister Simpson and Superintendent Shepard — they called Miss Middleton into the office. I couldn't hear what she told them, but apparently it didn't satisfy them. If they had a video, they wouldn't be as worried as they are. In fact, it was after she left that they decided that 'conduct that disrupts the learning process' can be read to mean 'presence that disrupts the learning process.'"

"So just because Jenna's spreading this story about me," I asked, "I'm the one getting kicked out of school? That's not right." "No, it's not," she said. "How old are you?" "Huh?" "How old are you, Andrew?" she repeated. "Seventeen," I said. "I'll be eighteen in a couple of weeks." "Well, then you can't hire a lawyer by yourself," she frowned. "How about your parents?" "Hire a lawyer for me?" I laughed. "My dad hates lawyers." "Aunts, uncles?" she continued. "I can ask my Aunt Caitlin," I furrowed my brow.

"Do it," she said. "In the meantime, though, here's what you need to do. They're trying to get this over with fast by giving it tomorrow afternoon. You've got three days to ask for a hearing, and since Monday's a teacher service day, they're hoping you won't come back in until Tuesday, when you'll be a day late."

My mouth dropped open. Those fucking bastards.

"I know," Ms. Bhandari nodded. "Close your mouth, Andrew. Now what you need to do is make sure you have a pen with you all day. When they give you the notice of expulsion, you write on the bottom of it, 'I request a hearing.'" "I request a hearing," I repeated. "I request a hearing." "Exactly," she said. "In the meantime, I need to ask you something." "Okay," I said. "Anything." "Understand, I'm not judging," she held up her hand. Uh-oh. "Okay," I agreed anyway.

"Have you been fucking Darcy Stone?" she asked.

I blinked at her. Darcy Stone, the wife of Coach Stone? I'd seen her picture in the yearbook I had been looking at earlier in the day; she was also a gym teacher and the coach of the girls' volleyball and softball teams, and if I remembered correctly my original English Self-study teacher. She was a very attractive woman, with a very prominent chest.

Ms. Bhandari was waiting for an answer, and I had nothing to go on but the little I knew of how I'd spent the last three years. "Uh, yeah," I said. "I knew it," she shook her head. "Winnie Oh and I have lunch together — she teaches media immersion — and she says that Darcy is your biggest defender among the faculty. She's actually a pretty smart little bitch. I'll bet she dropped you last summer, too, right before they passed that new law about teachers and students."

"Yeah," I agreed.

"If you can't get a lawyer, maybe she'll represent you at the hearing," Ms. Bhandari said. "I'll ask her. Shit! I've got to get going. Remember —" "I request a hearing," I nodded my head. "Ms. Bhandari, why are you helping me?" She was blushing a little, and refused to meet my eyes at first. "I told you," she said quickly. "My father went to NYU. Plus I hate to see the Jenna Middletons of the world win that easily. See you tomorrow, Andrew."

She was already halfway down the corridor before I had a chance to say good-bye.

I sleepwalked through class the next day. I was very fortunate not to be called on, and even more fortunate that there weren't any pop quizzes. I did ask Bianca during Religion if she would mind if I didn't sit with her at lunch, and she looked more relieved than anything else.

The summons was delivered to my study hall during ninth period, by one of those underclassmen that get shanghaied into working in the office. I reported as soon as the bell rang, getting a surreptitious nod and thumbs up from Ms. Bhandari as I was passed back into the principal's office. It was a very different "Snake" Simpson who sat behind his large desk, his hands officiously crossed in front of him as he frowned and nodded me toward the single seat opposite him.

"Mr. Torres," he began, "I'm afraid I have some very bad news for you. Based upon information that I have received and the investigation that I have conducted to date, I am forced to recommend your expulsion from this high school, effective immediately, under section three dash twenty four of the student disciplinary code." "Information from whom, sir?" I interrupted his little oration. "That is confidential, young man," he said breezily. "What is relevant is the outcome of my investigation, which suggests that your retention at this institution has the potential to seriously disrupt the learning process of the other students whom we are charged with teaching."

He waited for another interruption, but I'd already learned what I wanted. There was pressure from the outside. Plus, I figured I might as well let him finish the little speech that he'd written, the one he tried to keep me from noticing that he was reading from. "I'm sorry I didn't catch that, sir?" I asked. He'd started reading again and I'd missed a bit. "I said, Mr. Torres, that you have three school days, err, that is, three business days, to request a hearing. This envelope contains a copy of my recommendation, a copy of the student disciplinary code, and a handbook of procedures at hearings to be held under the disciplinary code. I would urge you to study it very carefully before you decide upon your next step.

"Yes, sir," I said, ripping open the sealed envelope. "This is the recommendation, sir?" "Um, yes," he nodded. I pulled my pen out of my pocket and very carefully printed "I request a hearing," signing my name below it as neatly as I could. "Will you excuse me a moment, sir?" I asked. "Excuse you?" he said. "Thank you, sir," I said, although by then I was already on my feet pulling the door to the outer office open. "Ms., um, Ms. Bhandari, would it be an imposition to ask you to put the date and time on this piece of paper and make me a copy of it?"

She bit her lip to keep from smiling, but stood up and took the paper out of my hand. When she'd returned it, I handed Mr. Peterson back the original and stuffed my copy into the packet. "Is that it, sir?" I asked. "Uh, yes," he said. "So you'll notify me of a hearing date?" "Yes," he said, "a hearing date." "Thank you, sir," I said. Standing up, I strode to the door, opened it, and left the office without another look at either Snake Simpson or Ms. Alli Bhandari.

The weekend went from bad to worse. At the dinner table on Friday night, I told my dad, and Tiffany and Dave and Maya and Imogen, that I'd been recommended for expulsion. "What the hell for?" Dad demanded. "For — " I started. "For hitting his girlfriend," Maya interrupted me. "You hit a woman?" Dad pushed himself back from the dinner table, looking like he was ready for a little violence of his own. "No, sir," I said vehemently. "Tristan Mills said that Hannah Belmont saw a videotape of it," Maya was speaking to Dad rather than me. "There's no videotape, sir," I told my dad. "I don't hit women. I didn't hit Jenna Middleton."

"You better hope the hell you didn't," Dad returned to his dinner. "It was, uh, suggested to me that I'd be better off with a lawyer to represent me," I said tentatively. "Fucking lawyers," Dad spoke through his food. "If you didn't do it, what do you need one of those parasites for?" He was looking at me, waiting for an answer. To him, apparently, only the guilty needed a lawyer. "Okay," I nodded.

Maya looked at me in triumph, Tiffany in disgust, Imogen in despair. When I knocked on Imogen's door that night, she still had the same look in her eyes. "Clare must have told you I couldn't have done this," I pleaded with her. She nodded. "Please, Imogen, you've gotta believe me," I said. "Then why wouldn't you tell me that you didn't videotape her?" she demanded.

I knew this would be the sticking point. I'd searched my computer looking for every video file on it. Most of them were porn, but none of me and Jenna. Actually, I was happy to see, none of me at all. But I didn't have many choices to correct the "lie" that Imogen thought she'd caught me in when I'd refused to deny that I'd videotaped Jenna. I could lie about the lie: no, Imogen, that never happened, you must have misinterpreted my silence. Imogen was too smart for that. My second choice was to tell the truth, about everything, and hoped she believed it. I hadn't a shred of proof to back me up, though, and her most likely reaction was just to tune that out as just another lie. My third option: the even bigger lie, just one that sounded more like the truth.

"Because I did," I said.

Her eyes widened.

"But nothing beyond just messin' around, you know?" I added quickly. "Jenna got real hot thinking about the idea of taping ourselves one afternoon. But I would never hit a girl." "All right," she finally said, opening her door to me and admitting me to her room. I sat on her bed and explained my odd little friendship with Ms. Bhandari, concluding with her recommendation that I hire a lawyer.

"I thought of Aunt Caitlin," I said eagerly. "Yeah, she would," Imogen said. "But Aunt Caitlin and Uncle Joey just left for a two-week cruise. I don't know what to tell you." "Well, Ms. Bhandari said that Mrs. Stone would represent me," I said. "That's better than nothing, I guess. Will you go to church with me on Sunday?" She looked a little taken aback. "Why?" "I dunno," I said. "I just figured that the more people I had praying for me, the better chance I'd have of actually getting it answered." "Sure, Drew," she smiled. "I'll be happy to say a prayer for you."

Imogen and I began our real thaw — unlike the Christmas day thaw, which was just like that thaw you get in late January before the real blizzard arrives — the next day. I took her out driving for two hours on Saturday morning in the mall parking lot, and then we had lunch together at Olive Garden. "Thank you for the new glasses," she said shyly at one point when we were waiting for our pasta to arrive. "Sure," I smiled. "I actually had a few guys checking me out last week," she smiled back. "And why not?" I said. "You're a great girl. Hot, smart" — always list hot first — "fun to be with."

Oh, shit. Fiona Coyne.

"You haven't said you'll go out with any of 'em, have you?" I asked. She blushed. "Nobody's asked me," she said. "Why?" "I, uh, do you like girls?" I stammered. Her eyes widened a moment before she looked down then she looked back up at me after sighing "I like people Drew, why do you ask." I smiled slightly "I kind of promised a girl I'd find out if you'd go out with her." "What girl?" she narrowed her eyes. "Why doesn't she just ask me?" "She's afraid, doesn't take risks," I shrugged. "I'll just tell her no." "Wait a minute," she said, putting a hand on my arm. "Who is it?" "Why?" I asked. "She's a scaredy-cat. You can do better than her."

She was getting ready to explode at me when she realized I was just teasing her. "Tell me," she whacked me on the arm. "Fiona," I said. "Get out! Fiona Coyne?" her eyes lit up. "Are you serious? She's like the most glamorous, beautiful, gifted gal in the whole school." "Musically," I said. "Period," she said. "She's also first in your class." "Speaking of my class," I saw an opportunity, "when did Clare join my class?"

"Just this year," Imogen said. "When she realized she'd have enough credits to graduate this year, she used to be in your class, actually, 'til she went to France. Then she got behind a little bit. Anyway, she got really bored last year, so her mother let her skip eleventh grade. She said you were in her Astronomy class. When did you get interested in Astronomy?" "I'm not, particularly," I said. "Although it looks like a fun class, I'm just trying to get my GPA up." "Why?" Imogen asked. "Oh my God, you still want to go to NYU, don't you?"

"Yeah," I agreed. "I have a chance, if I ace all my courses, and double my SAT score." "But why?" Imogen asked again. "You spent the last, like, two years being a, well, a..." "Jerk?" I asked. "Yeah," she said. "A jerk." "I guess I just decided I didn't like being a jerk anymore," I said after a long pause. "You certainly meet better girls that way." "You've got a new girlfriend already?" Imogen smiled, taking just as much delight in my life as she did in hers. "Just a friend," I nodded. "She's a transfer student." Imogen knew enough to let it drop.

"What happens when baseball season starts up again and you start hanging out with your, uh..." she started. "Asshole friends?" I suggested another ending. "Yeah," she grinned. "Most of 'em have graduated, haven't they?" I asked. "That's true," she thought for a minute. "You guys aren't gonna be that good this year, are you?" "That's what Coach says," I agreed. "Probably be good for you to suck," she laughed. "It probably will be," I nodded. We reached a natural pause, so I asked her point-blank what I should tell Fiona.

She picked up one of her last French fries — lunch had come and nearly gone by this point — and twirled it in her hand. "I can't seem too interested" she smiled "So you tell Fiona Coyne," she smiled, "that if she wants a date with a hot, smart, fun-to-be-with junior, she ought to ask her pretty damn quick. Or some guy might steal me away!" We both laughed at that, and after lunch she drove us home. Dinner was another mostly silent affair, and when I knocked on Imogen's door that evening afterward, I found she was out for the night.

We did drive to church together the next morning, though, although we still sat in different pews. Afterwards she left to spend the afternoon with Clare and I left to drive myself home. I hoped that she hadn't forgotten her promise to say a prayer for me. Because I didn't want to ruin what had turned out to be a pretty nice weekend by getting thrown out of school the following week.


	11. Heartbreaks

_**"Heartbreaks, the heavy world's upon your shoulders, will we burn or we just smolder, somehow I know I'll find you there" ~Cage the Elephant**_

_**11**_

Ex Libris Salvatio. Do you like that? I made it up. I have no idea whether it's actually Latin, but it is my new motto. From books, salvation. Or more accurately in my case, from the library, salvation. A lot of people find solace in the library; heck, I'd found some pretty good solace in the library myself the day after Christmas. But salvation? That was a lot harder.

Since Monday was a day off, for the students anyway, I decided to return the three library books I'd checked out, all of which were due on the following day. At the same time, I thought I'd start work on a paper that Mr. Perino had assigned us on President Andrew Jackson's battle against a national bank, a harbinger, according to Mr. Perino, of the Civil War struggle over states' rights. It actually wasn't due for another two weeks, and there was always the chance that I could be expelled by then, but I had a naïve hope that justice would prevail.

Mostly I just found it hard to accept the idea that they'd throw me out of school because Jenna Middleton was trash-talking me. Particularly if she wasn't willing to share the video she supposedly had. Jenna was only the queen of the senior class, after all, not the whole school.

My working hypothesis, based on what Coach Stone had told me, was that it was actually Jenna's father who wanted me thrown out. And I figured that if he had enough clout to get my scholarships withdrawn, and my tryouts cancelled, getting me expelled was probably like swatting a fly. Jenna as queen? No. Claude as king? Sure.

Why did he want me thrown out? It was possible, of course, that Jenna was still the force behind the throne. In my limited experience, though, that would be a pretty big overreaction. Although I couldn't remember breaking up with a girl myself, I did remember it happening to other couples in eighth and ninth grade. Some of them got to the public tears and yelling stage, but never any farther that that. So the idea of Queen Jenna screaming "off with his head!" over a breakup, particularly with an asshole like me, was just a little much. On the other hand, King Claude getting me chucked out because he thought I'd abused his little girl? Sure, I could see that. I could see that pretty easily.

Nevertheless, I trooped down to the library to start my research. Most of the kids, I figured, would just do their research on the Internet, but they were a lot more comfortable with the Internet than I was, and I'd always liked real books anyway. I got there around ten, and Miss Matlin gave me a big smile when she saw me, but there were too many people around with too many demands on her attention for me to give her more than a whispered "hi."

I was wading through a poorly written book on the controversy when I heard a voice across the table: "The library's closed for lunch, young man." "Oh, God, I'm sorry," I yelped. I'd slammed my book closed and nearly jumped to my feet before I reaDarcyed that I'd been given the message by a beautiful woman leaning over the table wearing nothing but a bra and panties, both of them with delicate white lace attached to what looked like shiny black silk.

I sat back hard in my seat, completely bowled over by the gorgeous Katie Matlin.

"I didn't say you had to leave, silly boy," she said with a smile. "I just said the library's closed. Everybody else has left, and we won't open until 1:30 this time." I watched in awe as she proceeded to crawl onto the table in front of me. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to stand up when a lady joined you at the table?" she giggled. I did jump to my feet then, and she giggled again as she reached for the front of my jeans. "I thought you might be here today," she said in a voice that was half-whisper and half-moan as she pulled down the zipper, all the while looking up at me and giving me a view of her chest that literally took my breath away.

"Cat got your tongue?" she asked with another giggle. "Yeah, in fact, I tried to call your cell to find out, but your voice mailbox is full, you naughty boy. Too many other girls, probably." By now, her delicate fingers had reached into my cotton briefs and pulled out my cock. "Mmmm," she purred, stroking it gently with her hand. "I figured I'd take a chance anyway, though, and wear the undies you like so much."

Well, my tastes hadn't changed at any rate. I liked them just as much now. On the other hand, I'd never seen a real pair of tits, either. So as Katie ducked her head to swallow my cock, I reached forward for the hook on her bra. With only a little trouble — nowhere near enough, I hoped, to cause Katie to think that her lover's body had been taken over by the brain of a horny ninth-grader — I unhooked it. Without missing a beat, she slid first one arm and then the other out of it, letting it drop to the table beneath her.

Oh, God, I thought as I reached down to caress her back with my fingertips, please help me last longer this time. He may not answer those kinds of prayers, but I could tell within a couple of seconds that I wasn't going to explode in Katie's mouth as quickly as I had the last time she blew me. How wonderful. Slowly, almost not believing my fortune, I slid my hands around the sides of her ribcage until I had two delightfully soft handfuls of Katie Matlin's tits.

"Mmmmm," she moaned. "Mmmmm," I moaned right with her. I found myself gently squeezing her, letting her nipples slip through my fingers and then very slowly squeezing them as well. "Bastard." I looked down to see Katie looking up at me through heavily lidded eyes. "Do you want a blowjob or not, Drew?" she asked in a husky voice. "Oh, fuck, Drew." She closed her eyes and rolled her head from side to side. "Let's —" she gasped. "Let's go to the sofa in the office."

Apparently there was a sofa in the office, even better. I let her lead me there, both of us walking kind of hunched-over to avoid being seen through the library windows. When we were finally in the office, she practically pushed me down onto the couch. "Now you just leave my boobs alone for a minute, Drew Torres," she scolded me. "And let me finish my job." She reached down and pulled my pants and shorts completely off, and then dropped to her knees in front of me.

"I don't think so," I teased her. I reached down and grabbed her under the arms, causing her to yelp in surprise as I swung her up into the air and deposited her beside me on the couch. By the time she could react, I was on my knees in front of her, my hands once again caressing her body, only this time from the front. I took only a moment to admire her sno-cone perfect breasts, and the small red nipples that topped them, each surrounded by just a wedding ring of crinkled red flesh.

"Drew," she moaned as my fingers closed over them and cut off my view. "Stop." "Why?" I asked her, resting my chin atop her pubic mound, still covered by her black panties but already giving off the wonderful smell that I remembered from our last session together two weeks ago. "'Cause they're too small," she murmured. "Baloney," I said, leaning forward until my mouth hovered over her left tit. She looked down at me, her body still slowly undulating beneath me.

"They're perfect," I breathed. I dropped my head a fraction of an inch and reached out with my tongue. "Oh, God, Drew" she cried out, "oh, God." If the spasms I'd caused the other day were climaxes, she had two more of them, one from sucking each of her breasts, and yet another two when I finally pulled off her panties and applied my newfound talents there.

Finally, with her panting and gasping underneath me, I moved up to insert my still hard cock into her.

"Fuck, Drew!" she yelped as I slid the whole thing deep inside of her well-lubricated opening. "Oh, fuck, I'm gonna... oh, Drew." That last Drew was drawn out, turning into a wavering keen over twenty to thirty seconds, like Dre-e-e-e-e-e-e-w! I still wasn't ready to cum myself yet, though, so I just changed my rhythm ever so slightly and within five minutes had her on the verge of another one. This time I was right with her. We spent five more minutes coupled together before she finally blinked open her eyes and gave me a strange look.

"You've changed, Drew Torres," she said.

I decided the best course was to simply smile at her. If I had changed, she certainly hadn't seemed to have any objections to it. "You always told me my boobs were too small," she smiled at me. "I was an ass," I said. "Your boobs are perfect." "Say it," she said. "Say what?" I asked her. "You know," she nudged me.

I sighed inwardly.

"You were great, baby," I told her. She looked at me again and opened her mouth, and then burst into tears. She sat up and threw her arms around me, still sobbing on my shoulder. "What?" I asked, slowly pushing her off of me and wiping the tears off her cheeks. "What is it?" She sniffled at me. "I know it's just our game," she sniffled. "You say that, I say 'you too, stud, ' and I pretend I'm one of your high school girlfriends. I'm sorry." "Sorry about what?" I asked. "About crying?" She nodded, her eyes welling up with tears again. "Why?"

"'Cause it actually sounded like you meant it," she buried her head in my shoulder again. "Hey," I said. I lifted her head by the chin. "I did mean it." Her upper lip trembled, her eyes looked deep into mine. "Why do you doubt it?" I asked her. "In high school," she sniffled again, "I was always pudgy, with these tiny little tits. I never dated at all. And only a little bit in college. And then when we started, you know, fucking, I used to pretend that I was in high school, and that I was one of your girlfriends, instead of, you know, a woman ten years older."

"Hey," I was still holding her chin. "Right now you're my only girlfriend." "Why?" she looked astonished. "It's a long story," I shook my head. "Well, I'm gonna give you the blowjob of your life," she told me fiercely, "and then you can tell me all about it."

I couldn't possibly tell her what a small goal she'd actually selected for herself. Let her think that I'd had dozens of girls blow me, even if all she really had to top was the blowjob she gave me two weeks ago. I was honestly going to be able to tell her that it was the best I'd ever had.

"So," she said after we'd finally cleaned up, still ten minutes short of the time she was supposed to re-open, "tell your older lover what's going on. What about that teacher you were doing?" "She, uh, broke up with me last summer," I explained. "After they passed that law." Katie nodded. "And your current girl?"

"I just broke up with her," I said. "And now I'm about to get expelled from school." "For what?" Katie demanded. I hemmed and hawed, but finally just swallowed my pride. "This girl is saying that I, um, hit her and, uh, choked her," I stammered. "Drew," she cocked her head at me. "Tell me this is not that loopy bitch with the cock-sucking whore game."

I stared at her, frozen into immobility. "The what?" I finally gasped.

"That nut case you told me about who wanted you to spank her and slap her and call her a cock-sucking whore," Katie said. "I thought you told me you were going to break up with her." "Uh, well, I didn't," I said. "Until last week, anyway. So I, uh, told you about this?" "Yes, don't you remember?" Katie asked. "You said it was disgusting. You couldn't believe she wanted you to do that. How come you didn't break up with her right then and there?" "I guess she must be pretty persuasive, huh?" I scratched my head.

"Men," Katie shook hers. "All you have to persuade is the little head. The big one never stands a chance. So why don't you just tell them that you couldn't possibly have done that. Surely all your other ex-girlfriends will back you up. Oh. You don't get along with most of them, right? And if I told them, people would just assume you only treat high school girls that way, huh?"

I smiled at her. Like I'd ever ask her to do that. I'd known better than that when I was a ninth grader.

Someone started banging on the library door just then — it was 1:31, after all — and I got lost in the stacks while she let them in. A few minutes later, when a larger crowd had entered, I made my way back to my research. When the library closed I walked by the circulation desk to check out a few more books, and then dropped a note in front of Katie. As I reached the door and looked back, I saw her finish reading it and blush furiously. Well, it was the best.

The next day at school, I at least had some peeps on my side. Mr. Perino and Mr. Townsend weren't among them, but Ms. Dawes at least called on me during class. K.C. and Clare both said hello when I got into Astronomy, and Bianca was waiting for me with a shy smile on her face when I reached Religion. We were apparently friends again, just like we'd been at the beginning of last week. We sat together at lunch and she asked me, again with exquisite shyness, if I wanted to go to the Winter of our Disco-tent.

"The what?" I asked her. "The winter dance," she said. "Haven't you seen the posters? They're all over school." I had actually seen the bright yellow posters, but I hadn't paid a lot of attention to them. So little attention, in fact, that I thought it was some sort of Shakespeare thing; I was quite proud of the fact that I'd read "Richard III" when I was still in ninth grade. It turned out, though, that I'd just missed the joke.

"I honestly don't know if I'm going to be here then," I said softly, after Bianca had explained that the dance was still several weeks away, on the tenth of February. "You will," Bianca smiled. "I believe you, Drew. I'm sorry that I kind of pulled away last week."

I smiled at her. Bianca DeSousa was no less a kid than any of the rest of us, just as susceptible to peer pressure. "I thought maybe you wouldn't ask me because of all of this stuff," she continued. "So I decided to ask you." "Well, then, sure," I agreed. "If I'm here. As friends." "As friends," she smiled.

And then, since we were friends, she asked me for my cell phone number.

"Cell phone number?" I repeated. "You do have a cell phone, don't you?" "Well, sure," I said. The way she'd looked at me suggested that if I didn't have one, I was probably some sort of antisocial freak. And actually, I did have a cell phone, come to think of it. Jenna had been upset that I hadn't answered it over the Christmas break. Katie had told me that my voice mailbox was full. And Maya, bless her heart, had gotten me a new one for Christmas.

"Actually, I just got a new one from my sister," I said. "And I haven't figured out if I can keep the same number or not." "Well, that's just a simple call to the provider," Bianca said. "And you have to change out your simcard." "Oh, yeah," I said. "I'll just do it tonight and let you know the number tomorrow."

I smiled at her and she smiled back at me. It was nice to have a friend. She looked like she thought the same thing, even if hers was an idiot.

After lunch, I got a summons to the nurse's office, where I found Ms. Bhandari waiting for me to tell me that I had a meeting with Darcy Stone during my seventh period study hall. Mrs. Stone's office was just like her husband's, albeit on the girl's side of the gym, but fortunately it didn't require a trip through the girls' locker room to get there.

"Hello,Andrew," she extended her hand as I entered, greeting me with a firm handshake that had me rethinking my answer to Ms. Bhandari about the nature of my relationship with Mrs. Stone.

"Mrs. Stone," I smiled. Her face fell. But she recovered and shut the door behind me. "Four months of fucking and all I get is Mrs. Stone?" she asked me. "With the door open, Darc-," I stood up. She gave me a big smile.

"How've you been, Drew?" she asked, drawing me in for a hug against her. "You tell me," I said. "You're my lawyer." "I wish," she said ruefully as she sat down behind her desk. "Why did you ever start dating this bitch? You certainly weren't dating her when we broke up. Never mind, it's not relevant." "Do you think it would help to have people, um, other girls testify that I've never done anything like this to them?" I asked hopefully.

"No," she said flatly. "They'd just say you changed. Besides, it's not really your conduct that's at issue here; it's your presence." "So I'm screwed?" I asked. "Even if, like, Jenna liked getting, you know, slapped around." "Is that your defense?" Darcy asked. "That she wanted you to hit her?" "No," I said quickly. "I just wondered. You know, hypothetically."

"Drew, we don't have time for this," Darcy said. "If you actually had a lawyer he could probably just demolish this whole thing and convince them to pay you his fees. But all you've got is me." "My aunt is gone for another week and a half," I told her. "She's the only one who might help me hire a lawyer." "The hearing's next Monday," Darcy said, lifting a piece of paper off the desk. "I just found out. And I asked my husband, the dick, about helping you out with a lawyer, and he said absolutely not, he wasn't jeopardizing his job here even if you were the next Roger Clemens. And since all our money's in one joint account, I can't help you either, Drew."

"So what do we do?"

"We make the best argument we can," she said. "And if it doesn't work, then maybe you can get your aunt to hire you a lawyer and appeal it to the school board." We sat there for another half-hour, reading through the documents that I'd brought with me. I left school even more depressed than I had on Friday. And dinner, even though Imogen did her best to involve me, wasn't a big improvement.

Late that night, after I'd finished my homework, I pulled out the new phone that Maya had "bought" me for Christmas, and read over the fifty-page instruction booklet. After a few minutes searching, I found my own phone, lying in its charger in my bookcase. I flipped it open to find a bright banner flashing at me: VOICEMAIL! VOICEMAIL! And after a few tries, I figured out how to get rid of it. Or how to start getting rid of it, anyway; I apparently had 24 messages.

The first one — surprise, surprise — was from Jenna. Maybe all of them were going to be from Jenna. Listening to all of these was going to be a real treat.

"Hi Drew. I wish it was the real you. It's Christmas Eve, and we finally got here at six after five hours on the road. God, five hours with Daddy and Mommy and Andy. I feel like a fuckin' dishrag. Anyway, call me when you can, as long as it's before eleven. And if it's not before eleven, where the fuck are you? Bye-bye!"

I had my finger poised over the number six key, following the machine lady's instructions for deleting the message. But suddenly I decided no, I should listen to them all first. I can always go back and delete them afterward. By the time I finally went to bed, around one o'clock in the morning, I still hadn't deleted any of them. But I was feeling a little bit better about life in general.


	12. Days

Still waiting on those reviews, could end up being like child support though...

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_**"That these are the days that bind you together, forever, **__**And these little things define you forever, forever" ~Bastille**_

**12**

The next day of school, Wednesday, went much like the previous day. Except that in Astronomy lab, K.C. Guthrie was absent. Mr. Betenkamp explain that the experiment that we were supposed to be performing, involving the measurement of gravity and the calculation of its effect on heavenly bodies, was the foundation of the whole semester, and urged me to move up next to Clare so that we could do it together.

"If you screw this up for me, Andrew Torres," Clare hissed at me as I took K.C.'s seat and we began to set up the experiment, "I'll never speak to you again." We were actually allowed to talk freely during lab, but it seemed that Clare wanted this conversation to remain confidential.

"You don't speak to me now," I whispered back to her. She glared at me, and then her face softened, just a little.

"Look," she said, deciding on another tack, "I need a good grade in this course to get into this college, okay?" "Which one?" I asked.

"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute," she whispered. "I've been wait-listed."

She saw my frown.

"What?" she asked.

"I dunno," I shrugged. "Imogen said you were really smart. How come you couldn't get into an American school?"

"You ass," her eyes flashed at me. "It's in Troy, near Albany."

"So do you have to learn Rensselearish or Trojan?"

She gave me a hard stare and returned her attention to the experiment. After a bit, though, I could see her shoulders start shaking.

"Or Albanian," I couldn't resist adding. "Do they speak Albanian 'cause it's near Albany?"

She kept her head down so I couldn't see the corners of her mouth turn up, and after a while she just whacked me on the arm and we got down to work. We finished the experiment in the spirit of pure scientific collaboration.

At lunch that day, I finally remembered Fiona Coyne. As I walked to my table I gave Eli Goldsworthy a subtle nod, and winked at Fiona, on one side of him, and my sister Imogen, who was sitting across the table. She smiled, blushed and nodded back she'd take care of it. It Looked like Imogen was going to be going on a date.

That evening after school I bought a tape recorder.

I had a ton of homework, though, so it wasn't until Thursday night that I finished all of my taping. At lunchtime on Friday, I told Bianca that I had some work to do to help Mrs. Stone get ready for my hearing on Monday, and went instead to see Ms. Bhandari in the office. As I'd hoped, "Snake" was out to lunch, literally this time. Ms. Bhandari was all alone, and gave me a big smile when she saw me.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Torres?"

"I need some advice," I said in a confidential tone.

"Come on back," she motioned me around the counter. "What can I do for you?"

"It's about the hearing."

"Andrew, you should really talk to Darcy Stone about this," she stopped me. "I work for Mr. Simpson, you know."

"I know," I said. "But I don't wanna tell her, and you're the only one I know who's, well, smart enough to do it."

"To do what?"

"To help me track down Jenna's father."

"What?" she sat back.

"He's the one who got my scholarships cancelled," I explained, "and my tryouts cancelled. And I know he's the one who's been supplying Mr. Simpson and Superintendent Shepard with information. And probably pressuring them to throw me out, too. I just want to talk to him."

"Do you really think that's a good idea, Drew?" she said.

I smiled at her. It was the first time she'd called me Drew.

"I really do," I said.

She punched at her keyboard and then picked up the phone.

"Is Claude there?" she asked, in a low, sultry voice she'd certainly never used around me before, a voice, I realized, that had suddenly had a Southern accent attached to it. "No, aah don't need to talk to him. Just tell him that aah'll be at his office at five this evenin' to go over the test results. No, aah think he knows who this is; we don't need any names. Thanks ever so much, honey."

She put down the phone and laughed.

"How do you know he has a Southern girlfriend?" I asked.

"I don't," she grinned. "But I figured, what are the chances he doesn't? Here's the address. Be careful, Drew. He's a powerful man."

"Yeah," I grinned back. "But so am I."

I left with a swagger that made her laugh, and at 4:50, I was in the anteroom of Claude Middleton's office in the nicest building in the downtown area.

"Can I help you?" the secretary asked.

"Andrew Torres," I said. "Here to see Mr. Middleton."

She looked shocked.

"Is he expecting you, Mr. Torres?" she finally said.

"I kinda doubt it, ma'am," I said. "Is he busy?"

"He's with his attorney at the moment," she said. "I'll just let him know that you're out here."

She scurried into the office, glancing nervously back at me one more time as she knocked and entered. She emerged with a man that I assumed wasn't Claude; he didn't look like a "Claude" for one thing, he was kind of young, for another, maybe in his early thirties, and he was dressed like a lawyer.

"Andrew, I'm Mike Dallas, Mr. Middleton's attorney," he offered me his hand and took a seat beside me. "Mr. Middleton tells me that he doesn't have anything to discuss with you."

"That's fine," I smiled. "I can just discuss it with you. I brought some tapes for him. Shall I play them for you?"

"Tapes?" he asked. The secretary was also looking at me.

"Well, one tape," I said.

There were two tapes, actually; I'd left the other copy at home. I pulled out the recorder and pushed the button.

We listened to the first message together, and when it looked like he wanted to say something, I pushed the "pause" button.

"What's the point of this, Andrew?" Mr. Dallas said.

"I think the point will become obvious, sir," I answered, "as we listen to more tapes."

I pressed the "play" button.

BEEP!

"Hi, Drew, it's Christmas morning now. You were a naughty boy last night, not calling me back. I got some great stuff this morning, probably to make up for being dragged to nowheresville. Or maybe just general guilt. Last night, Daddy started fucking Mom's little sister Melanie again. Mom told me after a few eggnogs that if Melanie gets knocked up, she'll be happy to give Daddy and his little dick to her. Call me, baby, I need to talk to you."

Mr. Dallas held up his hand again and we soon found an empty conference room out of the secretary's earshot.

"Hi, Drew, late on Christmas. Where are you, baby? This is like a fucking soap opera here. Dad was off watching some sports shit — sorry, baby — and Mom and Melanie practically got into a catfight. Mom finally ended up crying when Melanie told her that Daddy wouldn't run around on her so much if she'd gotten a boob job like Melanie. I just feel so dirty, and you know what that means! Whoops, gotta go."

BEEP!

"Sorry, it was just Mom. Anyway, baby, little Jenna is horny, baby! She wants your Drewy dick in her hot little pussy. She wants you to spank her like you did last month, baby, 'cause she feels dirty. She's your cock-sucking whore, baby. Damn it!"

BEEP!

"Mom, again. I know you think I'm too kinky, baby, but I never came as much in my life as I did after that. God, when you spat in my face I almost came right there. Oh, God, Drew, you've gotta do that again. I'll do anything for you, baby, anything. Maybe a little threesome with Hannah Belmonte, how 'bout that? She's a slut, baby, she'll spread her legs in a minute. And I'll get between 'em for you. Please, Drew, huh?"

The messages got dirtier, then angrier, then dirtier and angrier, and finally settled on angrier again for the last few messages, including the most recent, which she'd left on New Year's Eve.

I looked over to see Mr. Dallas with his head buried in his hands.

"So how much do you want?" he asked, a newly hard edge to his voice.

"How much what?" I asked.

"I assume this is blackmail, son," he said. "How much do you want?"

"And I assume, sir, that you're unaware of what's been happening to me recently," I said as I tried to quell the nervousness in my voice. "What I want is, first, to have my scholarships reinstated. Second, to have my professional baseball tryouts reinstated. Third, to have my expulsion hearing cancelled. And fourth, to have a written letter from Jenna Middleton apologizing for lying to people about my being abusive toward her."

He just stared at me.

"Apparently my assumption was right?" I asked calmly.

"You believe that Mr. Middleton did all of this to you?" he asked.

"I do, sir," I said. "And if I'm wrong, and he can't fix all of these things, I assume that I'll be sued after everyone finds out that I've played these tapes next week in school at my expulsion hearings."

He sighed.

"Come on," he said as he got to his feet.

I followed him back to the anteroom, where he ushered me back to my seat and knocked on the door to Middleton's office.

"Is that little shit gone yet?" came the roar from the office.

"No," was the last thing I heard before the door closed.

Mr. Dallas emerged about fifteen minutes later, a legal pad in his hand.

"I want to make sure I have this straight," he said, a little more rattled than when I first met him. "Scholarships reinstated, hearing cancelled, and a letter of apology."

"And my professional baseball tryouts, too, sir," I said.

"You really good enough to play pro ball?" he asked.

"That's what I want to find out, sir," I grinned. "That's why I need the tryouts."

"All right," he said. He stood to go.

"Oh, sir?" I piped up.

He looked back and raised his eyebrows.

"That other woman, the one with the test results? She won't be coming."

He was still laughing when I left the room and headed for the staircase.

I raced home, excited at the prospect of telling Imogen what I'd done. I didn't want to blab to the whole family, though, thinking that it might jinx whatever luck I'd managed to accumulate. I'd tell her tonight. Then, during dinner, Imogen asked me if I needed a ride to the test tomorrow.

"What test?" Dad asked suspiciously.

"What test?" I echoed, a small knot already growing in the pit of my stomach.

"The SAT," Imogen said with no little astonishment. "You said you were gonna take it again."

"What the hell for?" Dad asked.

"I'm sorry?" I looked at him wildly when I realized he was speaking to me. My mind had been elsewhere. Shit, January 27. Damn it. I'd even bought a study book. I just hadn't looked at it.

"What the hell you takin' that test for again?" Dad repeated.

"College," I said.

"How the hell you goin' to college, boy, when you get your ass kicked out of school?" he asked.

"Yeah, that will make it harder," I agreed. "May I be excused? Oh, Imogen, yeah, a ride would be great."

By the time I'd finished with the test early on Saturday afternoon, I was wiped. I'd spent the previous night trying to cram in all the stuff I should have been doing for the last few weeks. And a few nagging doubts had started to slide back in by morning. After all, I was dealing with a rich, powerful man, his vindictive daughter, and their lawyer. A lot could happen between now and Monday afternoon.

I staggered out into the parking lot, blinking in the bright sunlight, and walked right past our car. Imogen had initially parked it in the far corner of the parking lot, and it was now in one of the spaces closest to the school. Absorbed as I was in my test-induced panic, I hadn't given much thought to what Imogen would be doing while I took the SAT; it's not like she brought a book or anything, or that she would have spent three hours sitting in a car in January even if she had. She had apparently gone somewhere else, though. I learned that when she laid on the horn as I was passing the car.

"You're not supposed to drive by yourself," I grumbled as I slumped in the passenger's seat.

"I didn't," she said gaily. "How did it go?"

"Couldn't have been worse than last time," I said.

"Yeah, you stayed for the whole thing," she said.

"What are you so frickin' happy about?" I finally asked her as she pulled out of the parking lot. She'd been practically bouncing up and down ever since I got in the car.

She reached up and pulled down a piece of plastic from the visor: a freshly-minted driver's license, hot off the DMV laminating machine. I studied it for a minute, and handed it back.

"That's the first good picture I've ever seen on one of those," I said.

"You jerk," she laughed.

I smiled back at her.

"Congrats, Imogen," I said. "Third time's the charm, huh? So how did you get there?"

"Clare took me," she smiled. "First appointment of the day."

"So whatcha been doin' ever since?" I asked.

"I took Clare to breakfast," she said. "To say thanks. And now I'm taking you to lunch for the same reason. Thanks, big brother."

"Sure, kid."

After that, it was a great weekend. I slept for most of it, but it was still a great weekend.

The car wouldn't start on Monday morning, so Imogen and I had to race to catch the bus. It seemed like a bad omen to me, but once I got to school, I decided that maybe I had just gotten my bad luck out of the way really early. Because there, on the steps of the school, handing out a piece of paper to every student who walked by him, was Mr. Mike Dallas, who gave me a grin as I approached.

"I hope everything is to your satisfaction, Mr. Torres," he said as he gave me a copy of his handout. "Your scholarship offers will be back in place today, your tryouts start again next week. We can't actually control the expulsion hearing, but I don't think it'll be a problem. And here's your letter."

"Thank you, sir," I smiled. "I hope you're getting overtime for being here so early."

"Damn right," he smiled back at me.

I don't know what kind of letter I'd expected. The chances of Jenna just saying "I'm sorry, I lied" were probably pretty slim to begin with. But this letter was odd, and I was just going to have to wait to find out whether it did what I wanted it to, namely, restore me to the good graces of the Degrassi Community student body.

I didn't have to wait long. Mrs. Dawes altered her usual schedule at the beginning of our third period seminar.

"We're going to take a little break today, people," she began in a stern voice, "and temporarily suspend the fascinating discussion we began last week on Mr. Melville. I always believe in calling attention to excellent writing, and I found an example of it this morning in my mailbox."

She handed me the papers for my row. After I'd passed the stack back to Becky, I realized it was a copy of the letter I'd been given this morning.

"You'll note that I have redacted the name of its author as well as another name in the letter," Ms. Dawes said. "Do you know what 'redacted' means, Mister..."

She looked down at her class list.

"Torres?"

I looked up to see her smiling at me.

"Crossed out with a big ol' magic marker, ma'am?" I asked.

The class tittered.

"Exactly," she nodded. "Now let's all take a minute to read the letter first."

_My fellow students, I was thrilled this weekend to learn that I have been accepted into Beechwood Preparatory School, the prestigious private academy from which both my mother and my grandmother graduated, for this final semester. As a result, I will not be returning to school this spring. Before I leave, though, I feel responsible for correcting a mistaken impression that a number of you may have received during the past two weeks. As many of you know, I am a very creative person, and have often regaled you with fantastic tales and scenarios. Of course, my previous boyfriend, __**XXXXXXX**__, would have played a large part in some of those tales and scenarios. Recently, however, it occurred to me that some of you may have misinterpreted those stories in a way that would lead you to reflect poorly on __**XXXXXXX**__. Accordingly, I feel compelled to tell you that to the extent that you may have inferred that he ever actually engaged in any of the activities I may have included in my tales, you may wish to apologize to him for those thoughts. I will certainly only ever have the best memories of my time at Degrassi Community School, and wish all of you well in the years to come. Sincerely, __**XXXXXXX**_

"It almost reads like it was written by a lawyer, doesn't it, Mr. Torres?" Mrs. Dawes asked.

"The guy who was handing these out kinda looked like a lawyer, too, ma'am," I agreed.

"Very good," she said. "Is everyone done? Okay, let's begin. We'll leave aside for the moment this business about Beechwood Preparatory School. There are two ways of getting into Beechwood Preparatory School — grades and money. The better the grades, the lower the tuition, and vice versa. In this case, I suspect the young lady's parents —Richmond is a girls' school, so we know the author, or let's say the signer, is a young lady — her parents finally decided to fork over enough money to meet the magic figure."

The class giggled at that.

"I also want to note that I personally was unaware of this creativity this young lady claims to possess," she continued. "That surprises me, of course, because I personally edit the school's creative writing journal. But be that as it may, let's turn to the fifth sentence, where it turns out that some of us here at Marshall may have misinterpreted this young lady's fantasies. I'm sure that by now you're all familiar with those apologies that start out, 'I'm sorry if you took offense at what I said.' I'm not sorry I called you a dingbat; I'm sorry that you, for whatever reason —"

The class burst into laughter as she threw out her arms and rolled her eyes.

"—considered that to be offensive. To you personally.

"This letter, people, is even better than that. It's not her fault, it's not the fault of the person whose reputation she's been trashing all over school. No, it's the fault of all of us for inferring the wrong thing. What's the difference between inferring and implying, Miss... Morley."

"You imply something in your own speech," Jacinta Morley said, "but it's your listener who infers something from it."

"Exactly," Mrs. Dawes said. "And apparently I've been guilty of this as well. So I would like to take advantage of this opportunity to issue a general apology, here in front of all of you, for ever even thinking that this nonsense might be true. And I commend this letter to you if any of you, God forbid, ever want to become lawyers. Now, let's get back to Mr. Bartleby."

I sat next to Clare in Astronomy the following period, because K.C. was still out, and she gave me a punch in the arm. Which was probably as good as I was going to get from Clare. I sat next to a very pleased Bianca in Religion and at lunch, surrounded by tables filled with other kids who were no longer convinced that I had typhoid.

Finally, after school had ended, I walked into the principal's office with a half-suppressed grin, joining "Snake," Superintendent Shepard, and Darcy Stone. Snake shuffled a few papers on his desk, and then called the hearing to order.

"Due to some, uh, new information that I have received," he started officiously, "it has been determined that the recommendation that Andrew Torres be expelled from Degrassi Community School cannot proceed, and that it should be withdrawn."

He droned on for a bit, but I was too busy grinning at Darcy Stone to pay much attention. Fifteen minutes later, I opened the door to the outer office and saw Alli Bhandari looking at me hopefully. The bench that took up the entire length of the wall opposite the counter was filled with my friends, also all looking hopeful: Bianca, Imogen, Eli, and Clare. And Fiona Coyne, who was apparently going to be one of my close friends.

"Well?" Bianca asked after I paraded out in silence

I curved my fingers and blew on my fingernails before rubbing them on my chest.

"It's going to be sponged from my record," I announced proudly.

"Expunged," Darcy corrected me as she followed me out and shut the door behind her.

"Ex-sponged," I agreed.

Darcy just shook her head and laughed.

"And I owe it all to the support of my friends," I said, smiling at Alli Bhandari before I turned back to Bianca. "Looks like you'll have to go to the dance with me after all."

She smiled back.

"How about you guys?" I asked the others. "You all goin' discoin' next weekend?"

Clare and Eli were nodding; Imogen was looking intently at Fiona, who was staring at her shoes.

"Oh, fer cryin' out loud, Fiona Coyne," I said. "What are you waitin' for, an engraved invitation? Come on, hunny, ya snooze, ya lose. The tide waits for no man-er woman. Wait not, want not. Help me out here, Mrs. Stone."

"I think you're doing fine," Liz laughed. "Although I think it's 'waste not, want not."

"That, too, Fiona Coyne," I said.

By now everyone was looking at Fiona.

She swallowed hard.

"Um, Imogen," she asked, "would you like to go to the dance with me?"

"I'll think about it," Imogen threw her head up in the air.

"You'll what?" I stared at her.

"Okay, I'll go," Imogen said. She turned to me. "What, you want everyone to think I'm easy?"

As everyone laughed, I remembered my manners.

"I'm sorry, Ms. Stone," I said. "This is my friend Bianca, my sister Imogen, my friend Eli, my friend Clare, and Imogen's date, Fiona."

"Bianca, it's nice to meet you," Liz shook hands. "Imogen I remember from gym last year, Eli I know from the team, and who are you again?"

"You're the bitch that coaches the volleyball team, aren't you?" Clare said with a grin.

"Very funny, Edwards," Liz said. "That's gonna cost you two laps after practice today. Fiona, it's a pleasure. You're a lucky girl. I've got to run. Drew, I have no idea what happened today, but I'm very happy that it worked out for you."

She gave me a hug and left, and then I introduced Alli to all my friends as well. Finally, Imogen and I headed out to walk home together. Bianca lived in the other direction, and Fiona kindly offered to drop her off on her way home.

"Thanks for waiting," I said to Imogen when we reached the sidewalk.

"Thanks for giving Fiona the push," Imogen answered.

"Oh, she'd have gotten there," I said.

"Yeah, maybe the day before the dance," Imogen said. "And I'd have had to scramble around to find something to wear."

"So Clare plays volleyball?" I asked after a short pause.

Imogen stopped short, forcing me to turn around to look back at her.

"Are you serious?" she asked. "What the fuck is the matter with you?"

"Why?" I asked.

"Do you seriously mean to tell me that you have no memory of that horrible, godawful dance you had to do with Clare at the sports banquet last year, when you were both Athletes of the Year? Where you could have fit, like, two people in between you while you were dancing?"

We started walking again, in silence.

"I think I've been trying to kinda blank out all the really asshole things I did over the last couple of years," I finally said. "Part of starting over, I guess."

"Well, starting over is good," Imogen said. "If anybody needed to start over, it's you."


	13. Mind

**_"If you can't hear what I'm trying to say, If you can't read from the same page, Maybe I'm going deaf, Maybe I'm going blind, Maybe I'm out of my mind!" ~Robin Thicke_**

**13**

Dave Turner joined me on the bus on Tuesday morning, returning the world to its usual orbit. Dad had promised to work on the car that evening — actually, to help Imogen and I work on the car that evening — but we'd be riding the bus for at least another day.

"So I notice you hangin' out with that Bienka Dasose chick," Dave said.

"De-Sou-sa," I corrected him coldly. "Bianca DeSousa."

"Yeah, yeah," he said. "You athletes get all the pussy."

"We're just friends."

"Yeah, Drewster," he said with a knowing look. "Just friends."

I looked down at my book.

"Friends with benefits, though, right?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?" I looked back up at him.

"Hey, no offense, man," he grinned at me. "Those are some pretty nice benefits, if ya know what I mean."

Actually, I had no idea what he meant. The expression "friends with benefits" hadn't been in wide circulation when I was a ninth-grader, back in 2010, at least not in my crowd.

"What exactly are you talking about?" I asked him.

"You know, benefits," Dave looked at me like I was from Mars. "You know, bennie meaning good, fit meaning fit. You know, a nice tight fit."

He waggled his eyebrows and I was still none the wiser.

"Jeez, man," he looked at the blank expression on my face. "You know. Squeak, squeak, squeak."

He began to crudely thrust the forefinger of his right hand in and out of his left fist through his curled left forefinger.

That's when I reaDarcyed what he was talking about.

And that's when I took a swing at him.

I missed — the little bastard was faster than I thought — which is why I didn't get suspended. I still found myself sitting in Snake's office with Coach Stone during my sixth period study hall, though.

"Geez, Drew, thank God you didn't hit him," Snake said, trying to be my buddy again. "You could have been suspended."

"So you just missed him?" Coach asked.

"He's a fast little son of a bitch," I said. "I hit the frame of the window on the bus."

Coach sat up.

"You didn't hurt anything, did you?" he asked. "We got another tryout on Thursday."

"No, it was my right hand," I said as I flexed it. "'We'll' be fine."

Coach examined the hand, flexing it even more than I had. If Coach had been a doctor, he'd have had his license suspended.

"So this was that Turner kid?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"And he's fast?" Coach asked.

"Faster than me," I shrugged. "Why?"

"He was the last kid I cut last year," he answered. "If he's fast, he could end up battin' leadoff this year. You need to make sure you get along with all your teammates, Drew. You're gonna need all the runs you can get this year."

I ended up giving Dave a kind of half-hearted "sorry." My guess was that he had been forewarned by the coach, because he returned a full and complete apology for disrespecting any friend of mine, promising that he'd never do it again, ever.

By Wednesday, word had gotten around that I'd been a knockdown drag-out fight with Dave Turner because of something he'd said to my girlfriend. Bianca, of course, asked me about it at lunch.

"No, I just, you know, swung at him," I said. "That was it." "Over something he said about your girlfriend?" she asked innocently.

"Yeah," I said. "Well, sort of."

"I didn't know you had a girlfriend," she said calmly, taking a sip from her soda as she looked up at me through those eyelashes.

I stared back down at her.

"I, uh, don't," I said. "I don't have a girlfriend."

"So who were you defending?" she asked.

"Uh, that was, uh, you," I squeaked.

"Me?" she asked, cocking her head slightly. "Did he say something bad about me?"

"Could we just talk about something else?" I asked.

"No," she sat back and laughed, tossing one of her french fries at me. "We can talk about this. I can't believe you won't tell me. Was it worse than Half-breed Jew girl?"

"No," I swallowed.

"Then what was it?" she asked me.

Oh, Christ. This might have been the gentlest, slowest Inquisition in the world, but it was an Inquisition nonetheless. I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said. "He asked if you were my girlfriend. I told him no, we were just friends. He asked if we were friends with benefits."

Bianca stopped in mid-bite of her burger, as if she'd clearly expected the story to go on a lot longer.

"And?" she managed to say around a mouthful of hamburger and bun.

"And I swung at him?" I suggested.

She finished eating and took another sip of soda before resuming the conversation.

"Because?"

"Because he was a jerk."

"Because you're not my friend?"

"I am your friend," I said confidently.

"And you don't want to be my friend with benefits?"

This was one of those _Matrix_ moments, where everything around you slows down, to the point that you can just duck out of the way of the bullets when they start flying at you. Yeah, I wish.

Everyone else in the cafeteria was frozen in place. I could feel the cold soda on my tongue from the sip I was in the middle of taking. I could identify every scent in the air of the cafeteria, from greasy hamburgers and tuna melt to mashed potatoes and gravy. I could hear the dime — no the quarter — that somebody had just dropped on the floor. I could feel the plastic straw collapsed between my clamped teeth, and I looked down it at Bianca DeSousa, this beautiful, smokin' hot woman I'd met just three weeks ago, who perhaps, maybe, possibly, had just asked me if I wanted to fuck her. On the one hand, she had said it so obliquely, and so matter-of-factly, that I thought, no, that couldn't be it. And on the other hand, there was Dave, who'd pretty clearly implied — or I'd at least inferred — that that was the meaning of "friends with benefits." And Bianca DeSousa had said — I was desperately trying to remember exactly what she'd said — "and you don't want to be my friend with benefits?"

Was yes the right answer? Did that mean yes, I do, or yes, I don't. Wait, maybe it should be no. No, I do. Or was that no, I don't. Damn it. Why was this so complicated?

I could feel the soda about to slide down the wrong way. Coughing brought me right back to regular time. I was out of the Matrix.

Bianca had a grin on her face.

"Geez, Drew, you'd think I just asked you to kill somebody," she whispered.

"Andrew," I said.

"I'm sorry?" she asked.

"My mom called me Andrew," I told her.

She smiled as if I'd just presented her with a gift.

"Okay, Andrew. Why the hesitation?"

"Well, I was getting these vibes that said, you know, that you didn't want to be my girlfriend," I started, "so..."

"I don't," she sighed. "It's, um, complicated."

"Exactly!" I gestured toward her, as if she'd just answered her own question.

She smiled at me and took a strand of her hair between her fingers, rolling it around as she tried to find the explanation.

"When we moved here in September," she finally began, "I kind of promised my mom..."

"That you wouldn't date me?" I preempted her. Was I some sort of world-renowned asshole?

"Not you," she said. "Guys like you."

"Jocks?" I asked. "Tall guys?"

"Gentiles," she said softly.

"Non-Jews," she added, seeing my puzzled look.

"Wait a minute," I held up my hand.

"I know, I know," she said. "You just went through three weeks of hell because I was Jewish, and now I'm not dating you because you're not. Look, last year, I went to a nice, mostly Jewish high school in a nice, mostly Jewish suburb. And I dated nice Jewish boys."

"Not nice, mostly Jewish boys?" I tried for the laugh.

"No such thing," she shook her head seriously. "You either are, or you aren't, my dad even converted for my dad mom. Anyway, my mom is really concerned about me marrying outside of the religion, because she wants to be a nice Jewish grandmother for some nice Jewish babies, so I kind of promised her that I'd only date an M.O.T."

"A mot?" I asked.

"Member of the tribe," she explained. "A Jew."

"Okay."

"So we can't date," she concluded, tears welling in her eyes. "I can't bring you over to my house and say Mom and Dad, this is my boyfriend."

"It's okay," I patted her on the arm.

"But what you did was the most amazing thing anyone's ever done for me," she said fiercely. "And I'm gonna be proud to bring you over to my house and say Mom and Dad, this is my friend, and we're just gonna hang out together sometimes."

I smiled.

She smiled back.

"And if you just happen to get a few benefits along the way," she added, nonchalantly returning to her meal, "who's the wiser?"

I couldn't help but laugh.

"All right, Bianca DeSousa," I said. "We're friends, with benefits."

"Really good benefits, too," she said.

"Oh, yeah?" I asked her.

She nodded.

"I've got a really good benefits package to show you," she said, her voice dropping down an octave. "Real soon."

I swallowed hard and nodded.

"I wish it could be this weekend, in fact," she said. "But we're going to a wedding. We have to leave Friday at noon to get there before the Sabbath begins, and the wedding's on Sunday. We won't be back until late."

"You're gonna miss the Super Bowl," I pointed out.

"I'll try to make do," she smiled. "You're gonna miss your benefits. Are you gonna try to make do?"

I choked one more time on the last gulp of soda I'd been sipping, and lunch ended with us smiling at each other.

I sat with Clare again in Astronomy lab that afternoon, because K.C. was still out, with mononucleosis if the rumor was true. We worked together in silence until about halfway through the period.

"Uh, thanks for coming on Monday, Clare," I said quietly.

She looked over at me through her lab goggles.

"You're still an asshole," she said.

"True," I agreed.

"But Eli says you're a good guy," she said after a long pause.

"He's a good guy, too," I nodded.

"Yeah," she said wistfully. "What did you get for the calculation in number three?"

After that it was purely a scientific conversation, just between us scientists.

We were back to our usual routine at dinner time as well, with Paige gushing about how big her boobs were getting, with Imogen and Maya rolling their eyes, and with Jay and me hanging on every word. Dad and Imogen and I then installed the new alternator that Dad had picked up on the way home from work. I wasn't sure that this was exactly what the Mormons had in mind with all those radio commercials about the importance of "family," but it was nice to be back to normal in the Torres house.

On Thursday, I had a tryout for the Mariners, and on Friday, another one for the Cardinals. That was the one that they'd cancelled the week before. Coach claimed that they were eager to make it up. Fuck them. I wasn't about to play for the Cardinals. Assholes.

On Thursday night, I finished my paper for Mr. Perino. I thought it was pretty good; I'd found some books over at the library, after Katie and I had enjoyed our lunch together, that offered some surprising insight into Jacksonian democracy. So I was pretty confident when I turned it in on Friday morning.

And then Friday night brought a new treat. Imogen knocked on my door about seven o'clock.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asked.

"Feeling sorry for myself," I grinned. "Bianca's gone all weekend."

"I like her," Imogen said. "But isn't she the one who isn't your girlfriend?"

"Yeah. Weird, huh?"

"In your life?" Imogen shook her head. "Not even close. You want to go to the game?"

"Sure," I said. "What game?"

"Volleyball," she said. "Last home game of the year. 'Til the playoffs start, anyway."

I grabbed my coat and followed Imogen out to the car. The gym was fairly crowded, and Imogen scanned the bleachers until she picked out Eli and Fiona and a couple other kids who played in the band. We were about to climb up to join them when she grabbed my arm.

"Oh, shit," she said. "Drew, I'm so sorry. I forgot all about this being senior night."

"And?" I asked.

"Clare's dad's looking over at you like he wants to kill you," she hissed. "Come on, let's keep going."

We made our way up to our seats and I looked around. Maya was sitting in the stands on the other side, the only girl in a group of about four or five guys. They were all fairly big, fairly stupid-looking guys, more grown-up versions of the yahoos who'd been picking on me two months ago, when I was still a ninth grader. She was hanging all over one of them. He wasn't the biggest, nor the stupidest-looking, but he wasn't the kind of guy I really wanted to see my sister with. At some point, I was really going to have to try to talk to Maya.

And of course I easily identified Mr. Rowe. He was the guy who looked like he wanted to kill me. Fortunately for Clare, he put his anger aside while they introduced the seniors on the team. Darcy presented all three girls with bouquets of flowers and then posed for photographs with them and their parents.

After that, I was entranced with the game. Girls' volleyball is a fast-paced sport, and Clare was particularly good on defense. She was constantly diving to the floor, "digging" the ball out and putting it back into play. She was an excellent setter, too. Since they only got three hits per side, it was usually one dig, one set, and one spike. Five times out of ten, Clare was the one doing the digging as she roamed the back line. The other five times, she was the setter. It turned out to be an easy win for Degrassi. According to Imogen, that meant that we'd clinched the second seed in the upcoming league playoffs.

"So you want to go get a burger?" Imogen asked. None of the others in our little group had made any move to leave with the rest of the crowd filing out.

"Sure," I said.

"Good," she smiled. "We usually just wait here for Clare."

I spent the next half hour listening to Fiona Coyne and Marigold Lewis arguing about the war in Iraq. It was fascinating to be a part of an intellectual discussion, even if my part consisted of looking like a spectator at a ping-pong match. Finally, Clare emerged from the hallway, her hair still wet from the shower. She had a somber look on her face as she mounted the steps, not at all what I would have expected from a playoff-bound athlete.

"Mom and Dad want to take me out," she said slowly. "And you guys, too, except, um,..."

"I'll just head home," I said as I stood up. "Can you drop Imogen off?"

Clare just nodded, unwilling to look at me.

"Hey," I said. "I don't blame 'em. Like you said on Wednesday, I'm still an asshole. See you guys."

I took the car and drove home, feeling even sorrier for myself than I had before I came to the game. The rest of the weekend was a sort of blur. Church on Sunday morning, Super Bowl pre-game on Sunday afternoon with Dad and Jay, and the Super Bowl itself on Sunday night with Dad, Jay, and, oddly enough, Maya. We didn't get to talk about her personal life, but we did talk some football.

And, as usual, I fell asleep before the end of the game.


	14. Mirrors

_**"He pulled the mirrors off his Cadillac (yeah), 'Cause he doesn't like it looking like he looks back, He talks like his opinion is a simple fact, Somebody grabbed his collar, He cried the whole way home, He won't remember a thing 'til it starts again, That's how it is 'til the end (yeah)"~Tame Impala**_

**14**

Looking back, it probably should have occurred to me some time during, say, the entire month of January, to wonder how Maya got to school. She certainly didn't ride the bus, and I'd never seen her leave the house before Imogen and I did, even on the days we were driving. I knew she went to school, of course; I'd seen her there. She didn't have lunch at the same time Imogen and I did — sophomores shared a fifth period lunch with freshmen, while juniors and seniors had sixth period lunch — but I'd seen her in the halls now and then. Up until today, though, it had never occurred to me to wonder how she got there.

My newfound curiosity may have been prompted by my actually having spent a good bit of time with her the previous evening watching the Super Bowl. She had asked a lot of questions, and when Jay's answers proved as technical and convoluted as Dad's, she plonked herself down next to me on the couch. Until I'd fallen asleep, confident that there was no way the Broncos could possibly win, we'd actually been connecting on some superficial level.

Or it may have been simply that, for the first time in a month, I was actually looking forward to a week of school, and had enough time while I was driving there — Imogen and I had agreed to take turns — to stop and smell the roses, so to speak.

"So, um, how does Maya get to school?" I asked nonchalantly. Imogen looked over at me like she was about to question my sanity, yet again. "Humor me," I said. "Her asshole boyfriend picks her up, like, five minutes before school starts. I don't think she's made it to her homeroom on time yet, but Mr. Armstrong has a hard-on for her, so she never gets called on it."

"And her current asshole boyfriend is?" I asked. "Fitz," she said, once again with the look. "Fitz...?" I tried to prompt her. "Mark Fitzgerald? The quarterback? Of the football team? You really have just lost it, haven't you?" "Yeah," I agreed. "I kinda have." She shook her head but she kept talking. "She's been dating Fitz since like last spring, when it became clear that he was going to QB1."

"Wait a minute," I said. "That's not the guy she was with last week at the game. Mark Fitzgerald's a string bean." "Yeah, in tenth grade, maybe," Imogen laughed. "So were you. Rumor is his Dad gets him steroids." "What about all those other guys that picked Maya up over Christmas?" "The college guys?" Imogen asked. "Mostly old boyfriends, from last year, when they were seniors." "And Maya was a freshman," I nodded. Imogen shrugged.

I smoothly pulled into the parking lot, and we made our way into the school. First period was my first Government test of the year, and as soon as I got the questions, I knew I'd pegged this class correctly. The major question — "describe how a bill becomes law" — was straight out of the textbook. I could even see the page in my mind; there were twenty-eight steps. I could only remember twenty-seven, so I made one up: "No. 21, the President pro tempore impresses the bill for the register." Did it make sense? No. Did it have a number? Damn straight.

In History, Mr. Perino began his analysis of Jacksonian democracy. I was very pleased to learn the extent to which it coincided with my analysis. There were some teachers, like Ms. Dawes and Mrs. Kwan, with whom I was happy to disagree. They would grade my work based on its reasoning, not whether they agreed with its conclusion. Mr. Perino, though, was more likely to believe that anyone who held a contrary opinion was just wrong. Since my NYU admission depended on my being right almost one hundred percent of the time, I couldn't afford too many contrary opinions in his class.

Third period, Ms. Dawes dropped the bomb. Literally. She walked around the room, a sadistic little smile on her face, dropping copies of "Moby Dick" on everybody's desk. We'd be finished with Bartleby this week, she told us. Chapters one through five to be read by next Monday, five through ten by the following Friday. The same schedule for the rest of the year. Five more chapters every Monday, and another five every Friday. There were lots of chapters, people, but they were small. A paper entitled "Why not call him Bob or Sam?" was due on the 20th of February. No, Ms. Dawes would not explain the title; we should read chapters one through five first. She would answer the question next week, although her look implied that she hoped she wouldn't have to. Yes, Ms. Dawes was aware that the weekend before the paper was due was a three-day weekend; students were free to turn in the paper on the preceding Friday if they wanted, but they'd get no additional credit.

In Astronomy, we learned that K.C. Guthrie had contracted pneumonia as a follow-up to his mononucleosis, and that he was going to be home-schooled the rest of the semester. Mr. Betenkamp asked if Clare and I minded having each other as lab partners. I said no instantly; Clare reminded me about the consequences of screwing with her admission to R.P.I. which, I'd since learned, was actually a very good engineering school in upstate New York. But she ultimately agreed to accept me as her new permanent partner.

And fifth period was Bianca. Oh, and Religion. But mostly Bianca. Who told me she'd had a nice weekend but she'd have probably rather spent it here with me.

"Probably?" I whispered.

She gave me a brief but beautiful smile.

"How do I know?" she asked me. "Yet?"

At lunch, I suddenly found myself with a full set of friends. Imogen motioned us over to her table, where I sat next to her and Bianca sat next to Fiona. A week ago, I would have wanted nothing more than to eat lunch with a group of people. Today, what I really wanted was a chance to ask Bianca what "yet" meant.

I never got that chance the entire week. Not only had we been accepted into a new circle of friends, but there seemed to be one of them around us every minute of the day. With the exception of Clare, who was probably going to be cool toward me for the rest of our lives, everyone else treated Bianca and I like we'd been part of the group forever. For that matter, Clare and Bianca also seemed to get along great.

The only excitement during the school week came on Wednesday night, when Imogen showed me what I was going to be wearing to the dance on Saturday.

"I am not," I protested. "Oh yes you are," she said. "No way in hell," I pointed out. "What were you going to wear?" she countered. "I dunno," I said. "Jeans? A button-down shirt?" She gave me a smug little smile. "You'd have never gotten past the door," she said. "Dress code is seventies. Marisol's got Mo sitting by the door for the first hour keeping out the undesirables." Mo Mashkour was probably the biggest guy in the school. He'd been in the baseball team picture last year. I assumed he was the first baseman. Even on the pickup softball games we played in gym class back in the ninth grade, Mo had been "the" first baseman. "They wore jeans in the seventies," I said hesitantly.

"Yeah, you try that out on Mo," Imogen crossed her arms. "So what the hell is this?" "Saturday Night Fever, John Travolta?" she said. "You want to see a clip?" "I guess," I said. She'd downloaded one onto her computer and I had to admit that it was not horrible, just corny as hell. She nodded. "No way," I said. "Bianca'll never —" "Call her," Imogen interrupted me. I stomped off to my room to get my cell phone. Bianca wasn't picking up, but I did get a return text message: URAQT. I was a cutie. "She already knows, doesn't she?" I asked when I returned to Imogen's room. Imogen just smiled at me, and I stomped off back to my room again. Then I returned for the suit.

"What's Bianca going as?" I asked. "It's a surprise," my sister smirked. Women. I was destined not to find out what Bianca was going as until Saturday night, when I rang the doorbell at the address Bianca had given me looking like a goofball.

The woman who answered the door was older than I would have thought Bianca's mom should have been, perhaps in her mid-to-late-fifties. She gave me a long look up and down before she stepped back to admit me.

"Mrs. DeSousa?" I asked hesitantly. "I'm Andrew Torres."

"I know," she said coolly. "Please come in. Bianca will be right down."

Right down was apparently a more relative term than I was used to; I cooled my heels for ten minutes in the DeSousas' foyer until Bianca finally emerged at the top of the staircase.

"Oh my God," I blurted out.

She was dressed in a white short-sleeve shirt with short white shorts, accessorized with a white belt and a pair of white tennis shoes. The hairdo was unmistakably that of Farrah Fawcett-Majors, the look unmistakably that of one of Charlie's Angels.

"Oh my God," she snorted.

"You're gorgeous," I stammered.

"You're a riot," she giggled.

"Shall we go?" I said.

"Did you meet Mom and Dad?"

"Your mom," I shrugged.

"Then she just left you here?" Bianca sighed. "Figures. Come on."

She grabbed a long coat, and I escorted her out to my car. Mo Mashkour was sitting at the door of the gym, his white teeth flashing. He gave me a good laugh. Then he gestured Bianca to open her coat. She took a step back and flashed him, and he gave her an appreciative whistle.

"Hey, buddy," I said. "Eyes forward."

"Gotta check everyone out, man," he said. "Chief's orders."

The one thing I had learned during the previous week was that Marisol Lewis was "The Chief." Marisol was the president of the senior class, the organizer of all social events. In a nutshell, she was the eye of the Degrassi Community School hurricane. If something needed arranging, like this dance, Marisol would do it. And without delegating anything, either. Marisol had created the idea for the dance, booked the D.J. with orders to play nothing that didn't come from the seventies, and led the crew that decorated the gym. They'd done a great job, too. With a few pieces of cloth, they'd made it look just like the inside of a tent. That and a disco ball were all that Marisol needed. This was the indeed the Winter of our Disco-tent.

As I entered and looked around, I realized that everyone else in the gym had pretty much dressed in generic seventies clothes, and I did see a number of jeans. I frowned at Imogen as we approached her table, and she just laughed at me. I was at the Imogen Torres table, and we had all done things the Imogen Torres way. Imogen had outdone Bianca, and was attracting stares from across the room as the title character from the television show I Dream of Jeannie. I immediately revised my previous opinion of my sister's figure. She was a hottie. And smart, too, of course. Imogen always did her homework. When one wise-ass pointed out that I Dream of Jeannie was a 1960s show, she smugly pointed out that the last show had aired on May 26, 1970. Then she giggled and stuck out her tongue.

Imogen had saved us seats at her table with a very sexy Fiona as Wonder Woman and a bunch of other '70s characters Clare was a very convincing, if somewhat drab, Hot Lips Houlihan. Eli, in a white shirt and a maroon vest, on top of a maroon pair of pants, was a hysterical Keith Partridge.

Adam Moreno was the best, as a smaller version of Gopher from the "Love Boat." He kept asking us if everything was okay, and did we need him to get us anything from the bar, which in our case was a table with punch. Adam was great fun, but as the evening wore on, he kind of wore down. Part of it, I'm sure, was not having a date. Bianca, Clare, and Imogen did their best to drag him onto the dance floor, but there were times when we three couples were out there dancing and Adam was sitting there by himself. Another part of it, though, was Mark 'Fitz' Fitzgerald and his gang, who kept walking by the table and yelling out "Hey, Tiny" and "Hey, girly-boy, aren't you supposed to wait on me? huh?" By the end, I'm sure he wished he'd picked another outfit.

For my part, I wished that Maya hadn't been a participant in the ribbing. She was hanging on Fitz's arm for most of the evening. As far as I knew, she never actually said anything to Adam, but she certainly joined in the laughter with Fitz and his friends. At one point, I met her in the hallway leading to the boys' and girls' rooms, and asked her if she would please knock it off. She just rolled her eyes at me, as if she couldn't believe what a wuss I'd turned into.

The music was fun; I didn't know anything about disco, and with good reason. But there was some good disco — mostly the Village People — and the other tunes included some great rockers like Springsteen and Bob Seeger. Bianca was pretty much my constant dance partner. When she got up to dance with Fiona or Eli or Adam, I just sat at the table and looked around. I wasn't about to dance with my sister, hottie or not, and I wasn't about to ask Clare. The only other girl I danced with, in fact, was Marisol, who came by to thank all of us for dressing up so "festively."

Marisol wasn't my only other dance partner, though; it's just that I found hard to think of the third one as a "girl." As the party began nearing its scheduled conclusion, Marisol stopped by the table one last time to ask if any of us knew Alli Bhandari. We all looked blankly at each other, and then shrugged our shoulders and told her we didn't.

"Wait a minute," Eli said as Marisol was about to leave to try the next table. "You mean Ms. Bhandari who works in the office?"

"Yes," Marisol said eagerly. She followed Eli's gaze to me, where everyone else at the table was now looking, and raised her eyebrows.

"Yeah, um, I do," I said sheepishly. "I know her. I mean, sort of. I'm sorry. I just think of her as Ms. Bhandari. Why?"

"She's one of the faculty chaperones," Marisol said.

"Seriously?" I looked around. I hadn't seen her all night.

"She's back there in the corner," Marisol pointed to an area behind the D.J. "She's been just sort of sitting there all night and I wondered if somebody could just go talk to her."

"Sure," I said. "I guess. Is she upset?"

"Honestly?" Marisol leaned in to confide in us. "I think this is the first time she's been out since her fiancée died."

"Died?" I asked.

"In Iraq," Marisol said. "Almost a year ago. He was a grad student or something, but his Reserve unit got called up. That ass Simpson ordered her to show up here tonight. Could you please, Drew? You're a doll."

I was a little reluctant to leave Bianca, but she gave my hand a squeeze, and I made my way over to Ms. Bhandari. She was, in fact, sitting in the corner, wearing a pink fringed leather halter-type top and a pair of hip-hugger bell bottoms. And still that same bun.

I approached her cautiously, and she sensed me coming when I was still about ten feet away. I did stick out like a sore thumb, come to think of it. She got at least the beginnings of a grin on her face.

"Well, you look about like I feel," she said as I sat down next to her.

"I don't know how you feel," I said. "But I know how you look."

"Ridiculous?" she asked.

"Really, really hot?" I suggested instead.

She gave me a long, searching look.

"You are Drew, aren't you?" she smiled. "Where's your hot not-girlfriend — Bianca, right?"

"Over at the table," I said, pointing in the general direction. "I came over because I never thanked you properly for meeting me like that at the mall."

"Oh, it wasn't anything," she smiled.

"No, it was," I shook my head. "If it hadn't been for you, I would have fallen for that three-day thing, and I'd have been out of luck."

"Well, it was my pleasure," she said, offering me her hand for a shake.

"Mine, too," I stood up and pulled her to her feet.

"Drew," she tried to pull back.

"Nuh-uh," I pulled even harder.

I pulled a good bit harder, and I soon had her on the edge of the dance floor. The disc jockey began playing Bob Seeger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," and she slowly began swaying back and forth in rhythm to the music. We were joined by a hundred of our closest friends, and soon found ourselves bouncing up and down in an area the size of a telephone booth. She was a very attractive woman, although she'd certainly never dressed to emphasize it at school as far as I could tell. This time, her outfit did some justice to her body, revealing curves that the student body of Degrassi Community School had probably never suspected.

By the end of the dance, she was smiling at me, and when she tripped over someone and fell into my arms at the last chord, I held her there until the next dance began. It was a slow dance, and we danced as closely as a 20-something-year-old woman and a 17-year-old high school senior dared dance at a school function.

"This was nice," she said. "Thank you, Andrew."

"It really was my pleasure," I grinned.

And then another song began, another slow one. I was actually ready to pull away; this time it was Alli holding onto me. Apparently, she knew the song. After its slow start, it turned into yet another disco tune, called "Last Dance." And dance is what we did. Actually, to say that Alli and I danced is an overstatement; I was to Alli pretty much what a maypole is to a maypole dancer. She was amazing, twirling under my arms, sinuously moving around me, even dipping herself twice, fortunately without my dropping her. At one point, holding onto the fingers of my left hand with the fingers of her right as she extended herself backward, she reached behind her head and pulled something, causing her beautiful ebony hair to explode around her shining face like an aura. By the time the dance ended, and the D.J. was screaming out, "That's the last dance, boys and girls, thank you for coming," everyone else was just standing there watching us. And when we finished, with her in my arms again, everyone applauded.

Almost everyone. My table was looking on in amazement. Or shock. Or horror. I walked over and Imogen stood up to stop me as I watched Bianca head out with Fiona to get her coat. Bianca took one last look back at me over her shoulder, and I could tell that she was furious. And I thought I knew why. I'd danced the last dance with Alli Bhandari rather than saving it for her.

"Imogen, I was just helping..." I looked at Bianca and pointed back in Alli's direction.

"I know," Imogen said. "Probably one dance too many, though. Fiona will take her home. Come on. You can take me."

On the way home, Imogen countered each of my arguments about how I had just been being a good guy with the sympathetic observation that Bianca was upset, and that she'd probably get over it. "Probably" — that was a big help.

At church the next day, Imogen sat in the back with me, leaving Clare by herself in the front. When she caught me looking particularly forlorn during the confession of sins, she leaned over and whispered that I should just go to Bianca's house.

"Imogen," I began to protest.

"Just go. Now. Do you really think the stupid communion is more important than she is? Just tell her you're sorry."

So while everyone else was exchanging the peace, I slipped out the back.


	15. Mess

_**"Well, you're a hot mess and I'm falling for you, And I'm like hot damn let me make you my boo, cause you can shake it shake it shake it, Yeah you know what to do, You're a hot mess, I'm loving it, hell yes" ~Cobra Starship**_

**15**

I arrived at the DeSousas' about 11:20, and the same cold-looking woman answered the door.

"Hi, Mrs. DeSousa," I said. "I'm here to apologize to your daughter for — "

"Apologize to her?" she hissed, shutting the door behind her as she joined me on the porch. "If you even so much as hint you're sorry, you'll be forbidden this house for the rest of your life."

"I'm sor —" I started. "What?"

"She told me everything this morning," she said. "The mitzvah you did for her in school, the mitzvah you did last night, and how she left you at the dance. I told her I couldn't believe I'd given birth to such a selfish little bitch and sent her to her room."

"Her room?"

"Until noon," she nodded. She suddenly broke into a dazzling smile. "Come in. Have a bagel."

Despite my conviction that I had slipped into the twilight zone, I followed Mrs. DeSousa into the kitchen, where she explained to her husband, a somewhat unassuming guy, that I was the mensch that his no-good daughter had mistreated last night. He offered me a bagel as I sat down at their dining room table and Mrs. DeSousa poured me a cup of coffee. I put a small scoop of cream cheese on the bagel, and Mrs. DeSousa snatched it from my hand and told me I needed to learn to schmear — she told me I ate like a Gentile.

"I am a Gentile, you know," I said.

"I know," she suddenly looked sad. "I don't suppose you want to convert, do you?"

"I don't think I could do that to my, uh, to my mother's memory," I said.

"Your mother died?" she patted me on the cheek. "And she must have been so young."

She gave me a long, sad look, and then turned to her husband.

"We should be going," she patted him on the knee and abruptly changed the subject.

"Where are we going?" Mr. DeSousa offered the first sign of a challenge to his wife's authority.

"Lunch," Mrs. DeSousa announced.

"Lunch?" he was astonished. "We just finished —"

She didn't even need to speak. The look alone was enough to shut him up.

"Lunch," she said again, firmly.

"Lunch," he sighed.

I stood up to leave with them.

"No, no," she said. "You stay here. Bianca will be down at noon."

"You're just leaving?" I asked. "Leaving me... here... with, uh...?"

Was she serious?

"And remember," Mrs. DeSousa smiled as she got in my face and shook a finger at me, "no apologizing. I'll leave Bianca a note in the kitchen. Sit."

I sat. I was too nervous to finish the bagel, so I just sat. Ten minutes later, at noon exactly, I heard a tentative voice from the top of the stairs.

"Mama?" she called. "Mama, can I come down?"

I stood up and walked to the bottom of the stairs. She was still on the top landing, waiting for an answer.

"Hey," I said, as we finally saw each other. "I came over to — "

"NO!" she screamed as she started running down the stairs. She was wearing a bathrobe, and missed the second to the last step, tripping into my arms.

"Oh, God," she said, sobbing as I held her. "I'm so sorry, Andrew. I'm so sorry."

"Me, too," I said.

"Don't you dare apologize," she put a finger to my lips.

"That's what your mom said," I smiled.

"Oh, God, Mom," she said, pushing herself off me, and trying ineffectively to wipe off the tears on her cheeks. "Where is she?"

"She, uh, went to lunch," I said hesitantly.

"To lunch? She just finished breakfast."

"Yeah, um, your dad pointed that out," I nodded. "So look, about last night..."

By then we had started down the hallway toward the dining room.

"I already got an e-mail today about you," Bianca said with an enigmatic smile.

"From Imogen?" I asked. That wouldn't have surprised me.

"No," she said slowly.

"From Clare?" I asked. That would have shocked me.

"It said, 'You are the luckiest fucking bitch in the whole school, and if you don't go crawling back to him I will make your life a living hell.'"

"So not Clare," I frowned.

"From the school," she smiled.

"The school?"

"From Alli," she patted my cheek. "She must have gone into the office and gotten my e-mail address. I can't believe my folks just left like that."

"Your mom said she was going to leave you a note in the kitchen," I told her.

"Ah," Bianca said. She went in through the kitchen door and returned with a much redder complexion. She was even cuter when she blushed.

"What is it?" I asked.

She threw the note at me and headed for the hallway. I missed the note, of course, and it took its time drifting to the ground. By the time I picked it up and read it, I could hear her ascending the stairs.

I hope that your friend derives some benefits from our departure.

The words "friend" and "benefits" were underlined.

I went to the bottom of the stairs again.

"I can't believe you told your mother this," I yelled up the stairs.

"She wanted to know why, if you weren't my boyfriend, I was so concerned about you dancing with Alli Bhandari," came the return yell, the voice sounding almost giddy. "Well, are you coming?"

Was she kidding? With the note still clutched in my hand, I took the stairs two at a time.

"Where am I going?" I said when I reached the hallway at the top.

"Can't you even find a naked woman on your own?" Bianca giggled.

I followed her voice to a door at the end of the hallway. I stood there, staring, the note fluttering to the floor for a second time.

Bianca DeSousa naked was even more breathtaking than she was clothed. If my mother's life hadn't been so tied to the Episcopalian church, I would have become Jewish right then and there. She was lying in the middle of a pink bedspread on a queen-sized bed, her raven hair flowing out from her head like so many clouds at midnight. Her breasts floated on her chest, each one topped with a large, fully erect nipple. Her pubic area was a neat triangle of sparse blonde hairs, issuing an invitation that she highlighted by parting her impossibly long legs just a little bit.

She held out her hands to me, writhing ever so slightly on the bed.

"Drew," she whined.

"God, you're gorgeous," I said.

"You said that yesterday," she said. "Now come here make love to me."

So I took off my clothes, climbed onto the bed, and made love to Bianca DeSousa. It was an exploration at first, between two young lovers who both brought their own experiences with them. I learned that her breasts weren't terribly sensitive, but that the back of her neck was an unparalleled and, as far as I could tell, heretofore untapped erogenous zone. Bianca in turn learned that whatever technique she'd used blowing her last boyfriend, or benefits friend, wasn't particularly satisfying for me. We both proved to be very adaptable, though.

Best of all, she liked to have her clit massaged. I knelt between her thighs, using the thumbs of both hands to rub her, gently at first, and then harder and harder. She was emitting little girlish squeals of "Oh! Oh! Oh, Drew! Oh, Drew!" that were wholly at odds with her very adult body.

It was incredible watching her. With her legs locked around my waist, she twisted on the bed in front of me, her hands roaming from my dick to the headboard to her pillow, and even to her stuffed animals. At one point, she nearly tore an ear off a poor little dog.

"Fuck me," she whispered after her orgasm had peaked.

"I'm not sure you need me to —" I teased her.

"God damn it, Andrew," she tried to give herself an angry look, only to burst out in giggles, "just stick your dick in me."

"Hang on," I said.

I reached for my pants and pulled out my wallet. I'd stolen a few condoms from Jay's room, and I slid one over my cock as she smiled at me.

It wasn't love — she'd made it clear that she didn't want to let herself fall in love with me, and I was still somewhat on the mend from my misery of the night before — but it was a glorious session of love-making nonetheless. As she said, she offered a great benefits package. And I like to think that I gave as much as I got. With gasps and moans and laughter, with me on top, her on top, and finally me on top again, we actually managed to climax at the same time.

"Wow," she said quietly, stroking my face afterward as she lay snuggled underneath my arm. "I am a lucky fucking bitch, aren't I?"

"I don't think of you as a bitch," I assured her.

She grabbed the stuffed dog and started hitting me with it. I grabbed her arms to stop her.

"But if that's what you want..." I said.

I took her wrists in one of my hands, and twisted them gently, rolling her over underneath me.

"Oh, Andrew," she moaned, her face buried in a pillow. "I can't."

But the way she wiggled her cute little ass at me told me she could. So we did. And the second time was just as wonderful as the first.

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Monday, February 12th, 2007 was another day I circled on my calendar in red. The first thing that Mr. Kennedy did in government class was hand back our tests. And not to brag or anything, but YESSS! "A-plus — Excellent work, Mr. Torres." Maybe my answer had been correct; maybe the twenty-first step in a bill's journey to becoming law was having the President pro tempore of the Senate impress the bill for the register. Sure. My success was based on nothing more than my having remembered that there were exactly twenty-eight steps.

Another triumph in history class: another A-plus, on the paper that Mr. Perino returned. "A cogent analysis of the narcissism of the Jacksonian era." Whatever the hell that meant. I didn't care; I was on a goddamn roll.

In English class, Becky, of all people, still couldn't get around the topic of our assigned essay, "Why not call him Bob or Sam?"

"Did you read the chapters, Becky?" Mrs. Dawes asked.

"Well, yes, but — " she started.

"Mr. Torres," Mrs. Dawes stopped her. "How does the book begin?"

"'Call me Ishmael'" I quoted.

"All right," she smiled. "Ishmael. How does the book begin?"

It was a good trap and I'd fallen right in. She got her laugh, and turned expectantly to Becky.

"But it doesn't say why it's his name," Becky protested. "How can you just expect us to get it from the book?"

"I don't," Mrs. Dawes said ruefully. "I expect you to get it from the Internet, where all of your knowledge appears to come. But what I also expect is a well-researched and well-written paper, no more than three pages long, that persuasively explains why Mr. Melville chose this name. Okay? Good."

We moved on to a lecture about the time period in which Moby Dick was set, a lecture that would likely get dragged out over a few more days.

As it happened, though, those days were going to have to be postponed. On Saturday, I'd gotten an e-mail from the library letting me know that the books I'd checked out three weeks ago were due. Imogen was going to be spending the night at a classmate's to finish a project they'd been working on together, so on my way home, I stopped by the library to make sure I wouldn't get hit with any of those onerous nickel-a-day fines. There was a surprisingly good crowd there, for a library. Among the patrons was Mrs. York, the woman who had been hustled out of the library the day after Christmas so that Katie and I could have a little privacy. She appeared to remember me, and I gave her a small wave in response to a somewhat suspicious glare.

"Hi," I whispered to Katie as I stepped up to her desk with the books.

"Hi," she said. "Shouldn't you be hurrying home?"

"Trying to get rid of me?" I asked in as offended a tone as I could manage.

"I joined a book club," she answered.

That stopped me. I looked around the library, desperately biting back the remark that she spent her whole day inside a frickin' book club.

"My girlfriend told me it's a good way to meet smart guys," she blushed.

I smiled back at her. This was really cool, even if it would cut my sex life in half. Still, one shouldn't be greedy, particularly when half of one's sex life was Bianca DeSousa.

"So you are trying to get rid of me," I teased her.

"No," she blushed even more. "I meant hurry home because of the snow storm."

"Snow storm?"

"Don't you listen to the weather?"

"I'm a high school student. We only care about one day at a time. Pretty much always today."

She gave me a smirk.

"We're expecting 12 inches of snow," she said. "I'm surprised it hasn't already started."

"So that's why all the people?" I glanced around.

"Milk, bread, and toilet paper," she nodded. "Then books."

"In case the toilet paper runs out?"

"Thank you, Andrew Torres," she snatched the books out of my hand, her eyes twinkling. "I don't think we'll be loaning you any more books."

"Guess I better get home then," I grinned. "See ya!"

"Bye," she smiled.

It had started snowing while I was in the library, in fact, and by the time I reached home, it was already covering the grass. As I walked into the house I noticed that it seemed unusually quiet.

"Where's Imogen?" Maya asked as she suddenly came around the door from the living room.

"Her friend's house," I said. "Larissa, Clarissa, some rissa something. Where's Paige?"

"She was having some kind of pain, so Daddy had to come home and take her to the hospital," she said. "She left a note."

"I'll bet Dad loved that," I grinned.

"Yeah, I'll bet," she grinned back. "Oh, and Jay called. He's got late shift tonight, and then he's going to stay with a friend of his who lives near the Seven-Eleven."

"Well, that makes sense," I said. "Probably safer. It's really coming down out there."

"I know," Maya said. "Fitz slid into a car on the way here and busted its headlight."

"And you still beat me home?" I asked. "I'm only like fifteen minutes late."

"Why wouldn't we beat you home?"

"'Cause you would have had to stop for the crash," I said.

"He stopped, his truck was fine, so we left," she shrugged.

"But he broke the other guy's headlight!"

"So?" Maya asked. "I'm sure he has insurance."

"So does Fitz."

"God, you have turned into such a dork," Maya said.

I had no answer for that.

"What's for dinner?" she finally said.

"I'll let you know," I smiled.

I'd wanted a chance to get to know Maya. Apparently that wish was about to come true. Perhaps not as quickly as I would have liked, though.


	16. Unite

_**"Brothers and sisters unite, It's the time of your lives its the time of your lives, Break down, break down, Got to spread love around, got to spread it around." ~Coldplay**_

**16**

After I'd scrounged up a fairly nice meal — nice being defined as a meal that a) didn't make either of us ill and b) included a vegetable — Maya announced that she had a few phone calls to make. Either there were more than a few, or Maya's phone calls lasted a lot longer than mine. I did have a long conversation (by my terms) with Bianca, with whom I'd finally managed to exchange cell phone numbers. Then Dad called my cell, because he said our regular phone had been busy for the past hour. He told me that he and Paige would find a motel, most likely for two nights if the storm was as bad as they were predicting. I told him where Jay and Imogen were, and assured him that Maya and I would be fine. He reminded me that I needed to have the driveway cleared for him in case he did get home tomorrow.

I didn't really see Maya again until the middle of the following morning, when I was sitting in the living room, still trying to get through the next five chapters of Moby Dick. Chapters eleven through fifteen were due by Friday, and I'd fallen asleep last night during chapter eleven.

"I'm bored," Maya announced as she breezed into the room. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," I smiled. "Play a game?"

The word "dork" was once again on the tip of her tongue, but after a few moments' consideration, she finally gave me a grudging "okay."

"What do you want to play?" I asked. I walked to the hall closet, the location we kept the games last time I'd played one. Fortunately, they were still all there. The same ones, too.

"Candy Land? Chutes and Ladders? Scrabble? Monopoly?"

The first three were met with varying expressions of disgust, but Monopoly got what I took to be a silent vote of approval. So I set it up on the living room coffee table, and selected the shoe. I was always the shoe. Maya, to the best of my knowledge, had always been the thimble, but this time she absentmindedly reached for the dog. We had been playing for about ten minutes, and I was about to ask her about Fitz, which I figured was a safe enough topic of conversation, when she suddenly looked at me.

"What?" I asked, completely innocent of everything.

"Why do you keep staring at my fingernails?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't know I was."

"Well, you were," she said. "It was freaking me out. Don't you like them?"

She stuck her hands in front of my face, and I blurted out that, in all honestly, no, I didn't.

She was shocked.

"But all those girls you dated!" she exclaimed. "They all..."

"Had fingernails like that?" I made her sentence into an astonished question.

She nodded slowly.

"Which ones?"

"Jenna, Emma, Ellie, Manny, Ashley," she ticked off the list on her fingers.

"Bianca doesn't," I said, desperately trying to come up with a mnemonic for memorizing the other girls' names.

"Who's Bianca?" she asked. "That girl with girl with the black hair you were sitting next to at the dance?"

I nodded. Just expect everything monkeys ache? Juice electric eels making accordians?

"Is she your new girlfriend?"

"Are we playing Monopoly or Twenty Questions?" I countered.

"Truth or dare!" she said as her eyes lit up.

"No," I said.

"Why not?" she pouted.

"Because we're not a bunch of fifteen-year-olds at a slumber party. 'I dare you to kiss Melissa on the lips.' And no, she's not my girlfriend. Just a good friend."

A very, very good friend, I smiled to myself as I rolled the dice.

I looked up to find Maya still pouting.

"We can still play Monopoly, too," she said, trying to entice me into her game. I had no idea why she wanted to play Truth or Dare with her brother — it's not like I was going to kiss her — but I began to realize that there were advantages to the game, particularly if I could get some truths from her.

"All right," I said. "But Monopoly's the primary game. We'll play your game a little more slowly. You ask the first one now, and I ask the next one at noon, and then we go on from there."

She was apparently just as eager to question me as I was to question her. She tucked her legs underneath her on the couch and leaned toward me.

"Truth or dare?"

"Truth," I answered.

"How many girls have you kissed?"

How the hell did I know? Jenna, Emma, Manny — no, Ellie, Manny, then some A-girl, shit, I'd forgotten already, Bianca, Katie Matlin, Liz Torianni, that Heather woman I'd met at Christmas, Clare, how many was that? Ten?

"Thirteen," I answered.

"Thirteen?" she said. "Is that all?"

"That's another question," I said. "And I'm buying the Water Works."

At exactly noon, Maya sang out "your turn."

"No it's not," I said. "I just landed on Illinois Avenue, and paid you a nice chunk of change. It's your turn."

"No," she said. "It's your turn for a question."

Oh, right.

"Truth or dare?" I asked.

"Truth," she smiled.

I figured I'd start slowly. If I just started asking questions about myself, she'd get suspicious.

"Name all the guys you've dated," I said.

"All of them?" she asked.

I nodded.

It took her a good while to remember all of them. I swear when she was done that there must have been fifteen names on the list.

"But you're only in tenth grade!" I protested.

"So? You must have dated like six different girls in tenth grade after you dumped Imogen's friend."

"Clare?"

"Yeah, the nerd-jock," Maya said. "I can't even remember all of them. Terry, Eden, and that ditzy one with the laugh. Tee-hee-hee! What was her name?"

"I have no idea," I said. Thank every joker eating maple apricots. Got it. "It's your roll."

Maya was quite the little entrepreneur. By the time the clock struck one, she had a number of red hotels and I had a dwindling pile of cash.

"Truth or dare," she said.

"Dare," I said.

Truthfully, I thought, what could she have me do? Run outside naked in the snow?

"I want to see it," she said, looking at my crotch.

"See what?" I asked in alarm.

"Your dick," she said.

"Why?"

"What do you care?" she laughed. "You picked dare, you have to do it."

I just stared at her.

"Oh, all right," she said with another giggle. "Last year, Tori Santos said she watched you and her sister, Manny, do it for like half an hour, and she said you were really, you know, big."

"I'm not."

"I'll be the judge of that," she said.

"I'm not showing my cock to my little sister."

"Bawk, bawk-bawk-bawk-bawk-BAWK," she said, flapping her folded arms against her side.

"I'm not scared," I said, "it's just not, you know..."

"We're not gonna fuck, Drew," she shook her head. "I just want to see it."

Apparently that was the price of further conversation with Maya, so I sighed and pulled down my pants.

"You're right," she finally said.

"About?"

"It's not that big," she said.

"See?"

"Although it is big," she made a little moue with her mouth. "It's just not really big, like Tori said."

"Tori was probably new to the game," I said, zipping it back inside.

"True," she admitted.

An hour later, I'd been completely wiped out and we started another game of Monopoly. I switched to the ship; clearly the shoe's luck was all gone.

"Truth or dare?" I asked.

"Dare," she said.

Damn. A dare was the last thing I wanted.

"Come on," she said.

I needed to put a quick end to these dares.

"Okay. Here. Pretend my fist is your boyfriend and give me your best kiss."

"Eeewww," she said.

"Little Miss Peek-a-boo is afraid?" I taunted her, putting my fist in front of her face so I could "talk" with my thumb and forefinger. "Afraid to kiss me?"

"I'll show you my boobs," she made a counter-offer, grabbing the hem of her sweatshirt.

"Maybe next time," the fist answered. "Come on, pucker up."

She grabbed my wrist and brought my fist to her lips, where she proceeded to slobber all over it like she was a basset hound.

"Yecchh," I said, wiping my wet hand on my jeans. "You kiss like that? Gross."

"What's wrong with the way I kiss?" she asked defensively. "You think you're a better kisser?"

"Is that a dare?" I asked. "'Cause I'm willing to let you go ahead right now instead of waiting."

"Yeah," she said. "Here."

I was a better kisser.

"Drew," she moaned after I'd slowly kissed my way all around her finger and thumb and begun probing the inside of her fist with my tongue. "Drew, stop."

I stopped and looked up at her. Her eyes were almost closed and she was breathing a good bit more heavily.

"But if you like your way..." I said breezily, picking up the dice.

"Jerk," she muttered under her breath.

At six o'clock, I finally got her on the subject of me, asking her to rank all of my previous girlfriends in the order that she liked them. She knew about eleven, although she still couldn't remember the name of the girl with the laugh. Jenna was at the top of her list, of course, followed by Manny. Clare was at the bottom. In between were a few new names: Christie, Grace, and Alicia. Thank every joker eating mandarins and canned grapes.

"Why did you and Jenna break up, anyway?" she asked.

"I thought everybody knew that," I said, forgetting that it wasn't her turn for a question that quickly.

"No. I don't think anybody knows."

"Bianca knew," I pointed out. "The day after it happened."

"Well, maybe one of Jenna's friends told her," she said. "But it didn't get around. So you broke up with her to go out with Bianca?"

She was clearly baffled by that thought.

"No," I said slowly. "I broke up with Jenna because she called Bianca a Half-breed Jew girl."

"Is she?" Maya asked.

"Is she what? Jewish?"

"Yeah."

"Yes, she is."

"So I don't get it."

"It was the tone of voice," I said, "and the way she sneered out 'Half-breed' and 'Jew girl' like it was some lower form of life. It made my skin crawl just listening to it."

"But Fitz..." she started to say.

"Fitz talks like that about other people?" I asked her.

"Maybe," she said. "Sometimes."

"Well, then don't you dare tell him about Bianca," I said.

We made dinner together after that, and were sitting at the table eating it when Maya realized that she'd missed her turn by about fifteen minutes. I picked "truth" this time, and she basically wasted her question by asking me what if Fitz used the "n-word."

"Would he say it to someone who's black?" I asked her, "like Marisol Lewis? Or only when he's with other white people?"

That answer put a quick end to that line of questioning.

At eight, she surprised me by picking another dare, and I decided to change my tactics a little.

"I dare you to show me your report cards for the last four years," I said.

"Why?" she asked breathlessly.

"So I can see how my little sister's doing in school," I said.

"What do you care?" she spat. "It's not like you're Mister Academic."

"I got an A-plus on my first government quiz yesterday," I smiled at her, "and an A-plus on my first history paper. And I already got an A-plus on my first English paper. We haven't gotten any grades yet in Astronomy and Religion."

Her jaw dropped open.

"What?" I asked.

"I thought you were taking, like, three jock courses," she said. "That's what Fitz said."

"I was," I smiled. "I changed 'em."

"Why?" she asked, dumbfounded once again by my behavior.

"I want to try to get into NYU," I said quietly. "Now, how 'bout those report cards?"

"I can't possibly find them," she protested.

"But you have them," I pointed out.

"Somewhere," she agreed. "But I don't know where."

"Okay. Well, you have to look for, let's say, fifteen minutes."

She stomped off, and when I hadn't heard from her after twenty minutes, I went up to find her in her room. Maya's room was at the end of the hallway upstairs, and I hadn't had any reason to visit it in the last month. Looking in, watching her search through stacks of papers amid piles of clothes, I could see why she wouldn't have wanted me to.

"God, Maya, this place is a mess," I said.

She whipped around, startled by my voice.

"Yeah, like your room is any better," she said.

"It is," I laughed, pointing down the hallway to invite her to take a look. "I woke up on the day after Christmas and said to myself, 'God, if Mom ever saw my room like this, she'd have had a fit.'"

Maya looked over at me, her lower lip quivering. She looked back at the mess in her room and then back at me again. Tears started welling in her eyes.

"Jilly, I'm sorry," I said gently, "I —"

"Get out!" she said forcefully.

"Maya," I protested.

"SHUT UP!" she yelled. "AND GET OUT, YOU ASSHOLE!"

I backed up and she slammed the door shut in my face.

Well, that had certainly gone well. After I put away the Monopoly game, I called Bianca to tell her what I'd done. She was very sympathetic, although as an only child, she probably didn't understand what I'd just done to my baby sister.

The next morning, I was more than a little surprised to emerge from my room shortly after eight to hear the sound of both the washing machine and the dryer. I made my way downstairs, started some coffee, and began hunting through the pantry.

"Here," Maya stomped into the kitchen fifteen minutes later and thrust something into my hand. She was still dressed in her bathrobe, her face still stained with tear tracks.

"What is it?" I asked.

"My report cards," she said.

"Okay. Here."

I thrust a bowl into her hands.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I made oatmeal," I said, turning back to the stove to give it a final stir.

I found myself becoming a little unnerved by the silence behind me, so I looked back over my shoulder. Maya was just standing there, the bowl in her hand, a fresh set of tears running down her face.

"You remembered," she said in a small, squeaky voice.

"That it's your favorite?" I smiled. "I did. Bring your bowl over."

"Oh, God, Andrew," she ran into my arms. "I miss her so much."

"Me, too, honey," I said, patting her gently on the back. "Me, too."

We spent the morning cleaning her room together, and then we turned our attention to the downstairs. Paige was not the world's best housekeeper, and Maya decided that we — meaning she and I — were going to have to pick up the slack. I took a short break to clear the driveway of the snow that had finally ended. Fortunately, Dad has a fancy snowblower, so it didn't take long at all. The snowplows were already going up and down the street, and it was only a matter of time before the family returned.

It was enough time, though, for Maya and me to sit down with her report cards. She'd never sunk as low as I had; even her grades for the most recent semester were B's and B-minuses. But I couldn't help but notice the straight A's she'd gotten in the second semester of seventh grade. She claimed to have no idea why they'd peaked like that; she was back to B-pluses in eighth grade. By now, though, I thought I had a pretty good read on my sister. The second semester of her seventh grade came right after the first semester of my ninth grade, my straight-A semester. It seemed to me that my baby sister looked up to her big brother a good bit more than she wanted to let on.

Imogen came home around four that afternoon, more than a little surprised to find Maya and me playing a spirited game of Chutes and Ladders on the living room floor. She joined in the next game, and when Dad and Paige got home, around six, we were all three hysterical with laughter. He explained that Paige's pains had amounted to nothing, but asked if we'd mind helping out with dinner for the next couple of nights.

"I got it," Maya sprang to her feet. "We defrosted some chicken, anyway."

All four of us — me, Imogen, Dad, and Paige — stared at her as she waltzed into the kitchen.

School was open again the next day, and the world hadn't completely changed. Maya was still waiting for Fitz when Imogen and I left in our car. I hadn't had time to give Bianca a final call the night before to tell her my good news, but I eagerly filled her in on what had happened with Maya as we walked down the hall after Religion. At lunch time, Clare informed everyone that last night's volleyball playoff game had been re-scheduled for tonight, and before I could say anything, Bianca promised that she and I would be there to cheer Clare and her team on.

As I drove Bianca back to school that evening for the game, I started to explain to her why we might not be welcome for any post-game festivities.

"Because Clare's parents think you're an asshole?" she asked sweetly.

"Uh, yeah, that would be it," I said.

"So does Clare, for that matter," she said, as if we were discussing the weather.

"Uh, yeah, her, too," I agreed. "Did she tell you that we used to, um —"

"Date?" Bianca finished. "Yes, she did. That's how the asshole part came up."

"Okay," I said after a pause. "And you and me? We're still fine?"

"Why wouldn't we be?" Bianca said. "I didn't know the asshole last semester, and he hasn't shown up yet this semester. Why wouldn't we be fine?"

"Just asking," I said.

"Of course, if he ever does..." she left that sentence hanging out there.

"Understood," I said.

It turned out that Clare's father was out of town, and that her mother harbored nowhere near the grudge against me that her dad did. So she sat with us, next to Bianca, in fact, and explained some of the finer points of the game. When it was over, she asked me if I wouldn't mind giving Clare a ride home after our pizza party. I picked my jaw up off the floor and blathered that sure, that was no problem, happy to be of help Mrs. Edwards, anytime.

"You do remember you're my friend now, don't you?" Bianca asked as we walked to my car.

"Sure, why?" I said. "What did I do?"

"I don't know," she shook her head with a smile. "You were being awfully nice to Clare's mom."

"Just making amends," I assured her. "I know who my friends are. I mean, who my friend is."

"Good," she said, slipping her arm into mine. "I'd hate to see you lose your benefits."

Me, too.

On Friday, I learned that the DeSousas, damn their insatiable wanderlust, were going away for the upcoming three day weekend, this time for a family reunion. So my tryout on Friday afternoon was an uninspired performance that left scouts from both the Texas Rangers and the Milwaukee Brewers unimpressed. Well, I didn't want to play there either. As we were finishing, Coach reminded me that I might want to — which I heard as probably should — start some light weight-lifting the following week or, in any event, no later than Monday, the 26th. He gave me another key to the outer door to the locker room to replace the key that I claimed I must have lost, so that I could get access on weekends,

But without Bianca around, this particular weekend was both boring and painfully slow. Imogen had a date with Fiona on Friday night. Maya had a date with Fitz on both Friday and Saturday nights. I had a picture of Bianca on my cell phone. In church on Sunday, I found myself in an internal debate about whether my confession of sins was broad enough to cover things that I had left undone but that I would have done if I had the chance. I decided it probably wouldn't. You couldn't apologize for not doing something that you would have had to apologize for doing. I definitely wasn't going to get an A-plus in church this year. Thank goodness it wouldn't show up on my transcript.


	17. Enemy

_**"I knew you were, You were gonna come to me, And here you are, But you better choose carefully, 'Cause I am capable of anything, Of anything and everything, Make me your Aphrodite, Make me your one and only, Don't make me your enemy, your enemy, your enemy" ~Katy Perry**_

**17**

"Now, if we remain very, very quiet, we may actually be able to observe the highly ritualized mating dance of the lawyer and the librarian. The incredibly slow mating dance of the lawyer and the librarian. These two first saw each other more than fifteen minutes ago, when the lawyer entered the library. He quickly scanned the room, and then did a double-take when he noticed the librarian sitting behind the circulation desk. Never having hunted in this territory before, he found himself a seat in the periodical reading area, which affords an excellent view of the circulation desk. He picked up a magazine — Time, it appears — and began flipping mindlessly through the pages.

"The librarian noticed him almost immediately after he entered, her senses fully attuned to the presence of the male of her species. There, did you see that? She looks his way again. He looks back. She drops her eyes. He looks back at the magazine. She looks over again. He, however, is concentrating on the magazine, which he has now finished. He puts it back in the rack, and absent-mindedly selects another one. The extent of his interest in the Librarian is now clear to the trained eye. Only now, back in his seat, does he notice that the magazine he's picked is Tiger Beat. A mistake. Can he return it? No, it's too late. What will she think if she sees it? But she notices only that his attention has been diverted. She frowns, and she pushes a pen off her desk. Success! He's watching once again. She stands up, smoothes her skirt, walks around the desk, and picks the pen up with a very lady-like knee bend. She returns to her seat, having been under his careful gaze the entire time. She looks up to see him looking at her. She smiles, he smiles back, and they look away."

"Is this going to take much longer?" Mrs. York asked.

"I'm sorry?" I whispered, still using my nature documentary voice.

"I could have another heart attack before they get together," she complained, looking at her watch.

"You want me to give 'em a shove?"

"How?"

I smiled at her and stood up, immediately attracting the attention of both the lawyer and the librarian. It was another holiday — President's Day, this time — and I was trying to finish my paper on Moby Dick. I had a little bit of an advantage over the other kids in the class on this particular topic, since none them were also in my Religion class. Ishmael was not only the name used by Melville's character, of course, but it was also the name of the first son of Abraham in the book of Genesis, a book on which we had spent a good bit of time in Mrs. Kwan's class.

That only got me so far, of course. As Ms. Dawes had pointed out, anybody could look up the name on the Internet. So I decided to go a little further, and look up a book that Mrs. Kwan had recommended as "supplemental reading" on her syllabus, something called an exegesis — I swear it's a real word — by some guy named Walter Thomas. It was, thankfully, available in the library, and I had arrived there around one o'clock. I had exchanged a few words with Katie, who confessed that her book club had been disappointingly feminine in composition, not at all what her girlfriend had promised. Then I had found the book I wanted and settled down to work.

Mrs. York had entered about an hour later. I stared at her a little too long, struck by the fact that she seemed to be at the library every day that I was. Maybe she came every day. Or maybe she had just gone through last Monday's book pretty quickly. I had waved to her, and she had waved back. We were library pals now.

A half-hour after that, I had looked up to see Mike Dallas, my good friend Claude Middleton's lawyer, walk into the place and look around like he'd never been here before. His gaze had lingered on Katie Matlin and then he had taken a seat among the periodicals with his Time magazine. Mrs. York and I had watched them separately for ten minutes or so, and then she had sat down next to me.

"Good match, don't you think?" she had said, indicating the two of them.

That's when I had started narrating my faux documentary, much to Mrs. York's delight. She was right, though; at this rate, we had a better chance of an earthquake throwing those two together than of one of them making the first move. I walked toward the circulation desk, distracting Katie in the middle of yet another of her furtive looks toward the periodical area.

"Can I help you?" she asked in a louder than usual voice as I neared the desk.

I smiled and walked around the desk into the back office.

"Andrew?" Katie called out.

I returned with her coat, glancing over to see Mrs. York nearly convulsed with laughter.

"What are you doing?" Katie asked as I passed by on my way to the periodicals. I figured that was one of those rhetorical questions, because by that point it should have been pretty clear to her what I was doing.

"Andrew," she hissed, "come back here."

"Mr. Torres," Mike stood up and offered his hand.

"Mr. Dallas," I smiled as we shook. "Enjoying your magazine?"

He flushed as we both looked down at the Tiger Beat in his hands.

"I, uh, you see —" he stammered.

"Uh-huh," I said.

Katie joined us as I took the magazine from Mike's hand.

"Andrew, what are you doing?" she asked me in a fake sweet voice. She reached for the coat only to find that I'd thrust it into Mike Dallas' now empty hand.

"What are you doing?" Mike echoed, but a smile began to appear on his lips. Katie pulled at the coat; Mike refused to let it go.

"Well, frankly, Mrs. York," I nodded at her, still laughing over at our table, "is afraid she'll have a heart attack before you two finally decide to actually speak to one another, so we thought I should give you a bit of a push. Stop trying to take the coat."

This was directed to Katie, who finally stopped trying to tug it free of Mike's grip.

"Hold it for her," I directed him.

"Slip it on," I told her.

"Now, there's a coffee shop down the street," I said. "Go find out if you want to date."

"But the circulation desk —" Katie offered one final protest, although she was already fastening the coat.

"I can probably handle it for twenty minutes or so," I said. "Now go. Come on, there's the door."

I shooed them in that direction and bowed to Mrs. York as they left. She was silently applauding me.

"Well done, young man," she said as I collected my book and papers from the table to take them to the desk.

"Just call me Cupid," I smiled. "Only five days after Valentine's Day, too."

Ten minutes later, she was helping me figure out how to check out the murder mystery she had selected when the telephone rang.

"Hello?" I answered.

"Katie?" came the low, almost whispered response.

"She stepped out," I said. "Can I help you?"

"This is Sheryl Stoner," she said. "Do you know when she'll be back?"

"I'm afraid I have no idea," I said. "But I'll be happy to help if I can, Mrs. Stoner."

"Do you know where she is?" she asked.

"Do I know where Ms. Matlin is?" I repeated. "I, uh, can you hold on just a minute, ma'am?"

Mrs. York had been mouthing something to me.

"What?" I asked her with an exaggerated sigh.

"Is that Sheryl?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Tell her we sent Katie off to try to get her laid," Mrs. York said. "Tell her she's been kind of crabby lately."

I handed the phone to Mrs. York. That kind of message was not in the scope of my duties. A minute or two later, Mrs. York returned the phone. Apparently answering the next part of the call was my job.

By the time that Katie returned twenty minutes later, her hand in Mike's arm, Mrs. York was long gone.

"Did anyone call?" Katie asked.

"Mrs. Stoner," I nodded.

"Oh, my gosh," she said. "Is she okay?"

"She's fine," I said. "They had a birthday party for Nate yesterday, so she couldn't call then."

Katie turned to Mike.

"This lovely old lady who lives in the retirement home does the New York Times crossword every Sunday," she said, "and takes a lot of pride in finishing it without using a dictionary. But she always gets stuck on something, so she had her daughter get her a cell phone. She takes it into the bathroom every Sunday afternoon at 3:30 and calls me up for help. I was going to call the home tonight if I didn't hear from her. Were you able to help her?" She looked at me anxiously.

"Yeah," I smiled. "The clue was Castor's twin."

"So you told her Pollux?" Katie asked.

"No, I told her Olive," I said with what I thought was well-earned sarcasm. "I thought she meant castor oil. Oh, gosh. I hope I have not screwed things up. Whatever will she do with the extra space? Of course I told her Pollux."

Katie stuck her tongue out at me, and Mike Dallas had a good laugh at the two of us.

"Excuse me," Katie said. "I just didn't know today's high school students were that familiar with mythology."

I just grinned at her. I knew them as Clare Edwards's stars. If they were also characters in mythology, that was fine, too.

"So, are we dating?" I asked.

They smiled at each other.

"Mrs. York wanted me to call and tell her," I said.

"All right, then, yes," Katie said. "Friday night."

"And thanks," Mike added.

"Sure," I said. "Glad to be of help. Now if you'll excuse me, I hear Ishmael calling."

"As in 'Call me, Ishmael?'" Mike punned.

"Exactly," I said.

I left around five and spent until midnight putting the paper together, interrupted only by a phone call from Bianca, who said she would definitely have rather spent the weekend with me. The next day Maya was standing in the kitchen door while Imogen and I finished breakfast.

"Can you guys give me a ride to school?" she asked.

"Sure," Imogen said. "Isn't Fitz coming?"

"I don't know," Maya sounded worried. "I'd just rather not ride with him."

"So you mean he might show up here any way?" I asked. "And lean on his horn?"

Maya shrugged.

We all piled into the Civic, Maya in the passenger seat and me in the back. I was at my locker after second period, dumping off my Government and History books and retrieving my Melville paper when I saw a meaty hand planted on the locker next to mine and sensed that its owner wanted a word with me.

He was vaguely familiar. Owen Milian or Millidan or something like that. One of my tormenters from ninth grade. From his size, two inches taller and 20 or 30 pounds heavier than me, I figured him for a football player.

"Torres," he said in a low voice.

"Yeah?" I asked.

"Message from Fitz," he said.

"What are you, his little message boy?" I asked flippantly.

He looked around and grabbed my arm.

"Did you tell your sister not to hang around Fitz any more?" he suggested.

"No," I said slowly. "I think I might have implied that he was a bigoted racist, but I don't tell my sister what to do. Maybe she just inferred that hanging around him wouldn't be a good idea any more."

"Well, maybe you'd better tell her different," he said. He was starting to sound like somebody from a 1940's gangster movie. I grinned at him.

"So you mean Fitz isn't a bigoted racist?" I asked him.

He paused. For much too long. The bell went off.

"Sorry," I said as I pulled free. "Gotta go. Have a nice day, Owen."

"Fitz's gonna be angry," he said to my back as I sprinted down the hall toward Mrs. Dawes's class.

Mrs. Dawes smiled as I knocked on the closed door of her classroom.

"Mister Torres," she said, opening it but standing in the middle to prevent me from passing. "I was afraid you were going to break your record."

"No, ma'am," I gasped, breathing hard.

"Paper?" she held out her hand as she continued to bar the door.

I handed it to her and she slowly walked back to her desk, scanning the paper as she went. I slid into my seat.

"Your thesis is that his name wasn't Ishmael?" she turned back to me with surprise.

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"Does anyone else agree with Mr. Torres?" she asked the rest of the class. "That Ishmael is a pseudonym?"

They did not. I heard Becky Baker' snort from behind me.

"Miss Baker," Mrs. Dawes had heard it, too, "why not?"

"Because," Becky sputtered.

"Because?" Mrs. Dawes asked.

"Because he said to call him Ishmael," she blurted. "Why would he say that..."

"If it wasn't his name?" Mrs. Dawes finished. "Well, perhaps Mr. Torres has an answer. I shall look forward to reading his paper. Of course, we'll never know if he's right or not."

She gave me a big smile, and turned the discussion to the five chapters we were supposed to have read over the weekend — we were up to chapter twenty now, only a hundred and ten from our ultimate goal. In Astronomy, Mr. Betenkamp handed out our observatory assignments. Each pair of lab partners was to report to the school's observatory on a specific Friday or Saturday night. Because Clare and I had different areas of the sky, we were given two nights: on March 3, two Saturdays from now, we'd be looking at Clare's area, and on April 13, a Friday, we'd be observing mine. In the meantime, of course, we were free to check out either of the school's smaller telescopes any time we wanted.

After Religion, on our way to lunch, I asked Bianca if us "friends" could get together over the weekend.

"You mean like what?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said. "A movie, dinner?"

"See, that's kind of getting into boyfriend-girlfriend stuff there," she said.

"So, what's not boyfriend-girlfriend?" I asked.

"Well, we can go to tonight's volleyball game," she smiled at me.

"Okay," I agreed as we walked into the cafeteria to join our usual table.

I was still confused, though. It had seemed to me, as we had walked to my car after last week's volleyball game, that Bianca had seemed a little, well, jealous of the attention I'd been paying to Mrs. Edwards. Jealous probably isn't the right word. Mrs. Edwards was a very nice-looking lady, but she certainly wasn't any competition for Bianca. In the parking lot, though, Bianca had taken particular care to make sure that I knew that I was her friend. Which I was. Just not her boyfriend, apparently.

This week's volleyball game turned out to be a major bummer, on three counts. The first was that Mr. Edwards was back in the stands with Mrs. Edwards. The second was that the Degrassi girls lost a heartbreaker. They were the higher-seeded team, and had beaten the Bardell girls at the beginning of the season. And they won the first game pretty handily. But Clare twisted her ankle in the second, and Bardell rallied to win that one and the next one. Clare returned for the fourth game, but the Bardell team was on a roll, and easily closed out the game to take the match.

The biggest bummer, though, had to do with Maya. Paige had asked Maya at dinner about the asshole who'd been honking his horn outside the house for five minutes this morning, and Maya had breezily said that she had broken up with her boyfriend and that he hadn't gotten over it yet.

"No kidding," I said. "One of his friends paid me a visit today. Owen."

"Owen Milligan?" Maya looked up.

"Yeah," I said. "He wanted to let me know that Fitzy's going to be angry."

Maya gave me a panicked stare.

"With me?" she asked.

"More with me, I think," I told her. "He was under the impression that I told you not to see him any more."

Maya blinked at me a couple of times and then returned to her food.

"Maya?" I asked. "Did you tell Fitz that I told you to break up with him?"

"It was easier," she finally said as all of us stared at her.

"Than what?" I asked. "The truth?"

"He called your girlfriend a kike," she blurted out.

"I don't have a girlfriend," I said. "What do you mean, a kite?"

"A kike," Jay explained. "It's an uncomplimentary thing to say about someone who's Jewish."

I looked back and forth between Jay and Maya. I was surprised that Jay knew that, and equally surprised that Maya cared.

"So just tell him he's disgusting," Imogen said.

"Yeah, right," Maya said. She looked like she was about to say something more, but snapped her mouth shut and again stared down at her plate.

"I told Fitz's friend that I told you that he was a bigot," I said.

"Oh my God," Maya stared at me, her body almost shaking. "He'll kill me."

"He won't kill you," Imogen scoffed.

"You don't know him," Maya told her. "He will."

"Who will, baby?" Dad interrupted.

"Fitz," she told him. "He wants everybody to think he's like this great, perfect guy and everything."

"Eeeh," I dismissed him with a wave. "So you dumped him. What's the worst that can happen?"

Imogen was the first to start laughing, and the whole table soon joined in. Even Maya smiled, although she still looked a little nervous.

That evening, I learned why. After the second game, I left for a pit stop. The boys' room was down the hall a bit, and as I was washing my hands, I heard the door bang open. I looked up to find an angry Fitz blocking my way. Behind him, Owen Milligan leaned against the door, a stupid-looking grin on his face.

"Torres," Fitz said seriously.

"Fitzgerald," I nodded.

"Owen here tells me you've been disrespecting me to your sister."

DUN! Dun! Dun! Please review! If you've read this far, please let me know, I'm not sure i If should even bother posting more to be honest!


	18. Voice

_**"I'm the voice inside your head, You refuse to hear, I'm the face that you have to face, Mirrored in your stare, I'm what's left, I'm what's right, I'm the enemy, I'm the hand that will take you down, Bring you to your knees" ~Foo Fighters**_

**18**

Telling Fitz that it was Maya who told me about his racism was probably a really bad idea. I decided that my only real choice was to agree with him.

"So?" I asked.

"So I'm thinking you should maybe tell her you were wrong," he said.

I'd been pretty much a coward in ninth grade, but I'd also considered myself a master of sarcasm. Despite my new body, my mental approach to life hadn't changed much.

"I'll do just that, Fitz," I nodded. "I'll make sure to tell her tonight that you're not a racist bigot. Yessir, that's just what I'll do as soon as I get home. Now if you'll excuse me?"

He didn't have a chance to excuse me, because Owen Milligan suddenly came flying forward, slamming into Fitz's back and knocking him toward me. The two fell to the ground together as I neatly I sidestepped them. I looked up to see Adam Moreno holding the door.

"Imogen was worried," he said as we walked quickly back to the gym.

"I didn't know you were that strong," I told him, looking back over my shoulder every few seconds to see if we were being followed.

"Proper application of weight," he said with a smile.

"Well, thanks, pal," I said. "I was getting a little worried there, to be honest. Speaking of weight, I'm gonna start weightlifting next week after school. Wanna join me so we can spot for each other?"

"Weightlifting?" Adam asked. "For what? Did Coach put you up to this?"

"How well did you hit last year?" I asked.

He gave me a glare and mumbled something.

"What was that, Adam?" I cupped my hand behind my ear.

"Two thirty," he muttered a little louder. "Asshole."

"Yeah, I get a lot of that," I smiled. "Start on Monday?"

He nodded.

"I'll get Coach to set up a program," I said.

Maya rode in with Imogen and me again on Wednesday, but on Thursday she was already gone by the time we left. At lunch time, Imogen told me that she'd seen her in the hallway talking with Fitz. I saw them myself later in the afternoon, walking together as if they'd never broken up. I found the sight disturbing. It had been easy enough to tell Owen Milligan that I didn't tell my sister what to do. But it was hard advice to follow.

Thursday was yet another tryout, this time for the San Francisco Giants. It was a little different from the others. After the guy watched me throw a few times, he told me he was going to go stand in the batter's box in front of Adam and said he wanted to see a little "chin music." They hadn't covered that in my book. I was on the verge of asking him what the hell he was talking about when Coach caught my eye. As the guy was walking down toward Adam, Coach leaned in to hand me another ball.

"He wants you to throw at his chin," he whispered.

"He wants me to what?" I hissed back.

"Brush him back off the plate," Coach continued casually. "High and inside."

"All right," I said skeptically.

"Just don't hit him," Coach added.

No fucking kidding, I thought as I watched him take a stance. He was crowding the imaginary plate a little bit, and Adam looked a little uncomfortable. But, as we'd done for the past couple of tryouts, he started to run through some of our signs for the coming year.

He called for the change-up. I shook him off. He called for the fastball. I nodded. He gave me a second sign for location. Low and away. No. Low and inside. No. High and away. No. He tapped his crotch — straight down the middle. No. His eyes widening, he gave me the only other sign he had. High and inside. I nodded. And threw.

Adam stuck his glove up in the air and, bless him, held it right there after he caught the ball. When the scout got back up — he had ended up on his butt — he looked over at Adam's glove and then back at me.

"One more time?" I asked cheerfully.

He was shaking his head as he walked back.

"Looks like you're gonna be a Devil Ray," he said.

"Yes, sir," I said. He left and I turned to Coach.

"Why the hell would I want to be a Devil Ray?" I asked.

Coach stared at me.

"They have first pick," Adam said as he joined us.

"In the Major League draft," he added as he saw the look on my face.

"But I don't have to —"

I was about to tell him that they couldn't seriously expect me to play for some team I didn't like, but then I realized — duh! — that's why they called it a draft.

" — play for them if I go to college, right?" I changed the sentence.

"No," Coach said. "They lose their rights as soon as you take your first class. We went over this whole thing last year. Are you okay?"

"Sure, Coach," I said. "Just nerves, I guess."

"I got class in five minutes," Adam said. "I gotta hustle."

We watched him leave, and I turned back to Coach.

"Me and Adam are gonna start lifting next week," I told him. "What kind of weights should we be starting with?"

"Adam? How'd you get Adam to start lifting?"

He was staring at me again.

"I asked him? Was that wrong? Shouldn't he lift?"

"Hell, yes," Coach said. "But he's never done it before. Maybe he's just taking it seriously now that he could be the starter."

"Could be?" I asked. "Why wouldn't he be?"

"That Milligan kid on the football team said he'd try out this spring," he shrugged. "We'll have to see."

"Adam's my catcher," I said firmly.

"Not if he can't hit," Coach said.

"Adam's my catcher," I repeated. He'd damn well better hit.

"Then it's a good thing he's gonna be lifting," Coach said. "Come on. I'll give you a schedule."

That evening was another "friends" event. I picked up Eli, Bianca, and Adam and we headed over to the band concert. It was fairly ordinary at the beginning; the junior high band was no better than it had been when I was in junior high school. I'd been to their concert just before Christmas, in fact, and they stunk. The senior high band, though, was amazing, even though, for the most part, it was the same people I'd seen playing for the junior high band just two months ago. They'd clearly gotten a lot better in the three years I'd missed. And when Fiona Coyne came out as a soloist, to play some kind of trumpet thing by Haydn, fifteen minutes worth of music that she'd memorized, I couldn't believe it.

"Isn't she great?" Imogen gushed into my right ear as we stood up. I was too busy applauding to answer.

Friday brought something else new: a religion test, on the first five books of the Bible. I was pretty pleased with myself overall, although I probably could have done a little better on the essay question. After class, Bianca was bubbling away that if all the tests were going to be this easy, she'd ace this class for sure. Since she'd already been admitted to Cornell, though, I failed to see what the big deal was. Jealous? Maybe I was. Probably, though, I was just upset that I still hadn't figured out all the rules of this "friends with benefits" thing yet. There weren't any friends events scheduled for the weekend, and it looked like I was going to be doing without my benefits for at least another week.

The only really good part of the weekend was Sunday afternoon, when I made a point of arriving at the library just before 3:30. Mrs. York was sitting next to me as we both pretended to read. The phone rang, and Katie answered it.

"Did I what?" she asked in horror. "We've only had two dates."

She cast a murderous glare at the table where both Mrs. York and I were laughing hysterically.

"Crabby?" she yelled at us, attracting the attention of everyone else. "I'll show you crabby."

She returned to her call.

"Now what can I help you with?" she asked Mrs. Stoner.

It turned out to be a baseball question, and Katie had to call me over to help her answer it.

"Two dates, huh?" I asked after I hung up. "I noticed you didn't tell Sheryl that the answer was no."

Katie Matlin was blushing furiously as I returned to the table to exchange a high-five with Mrs. York. Our work done, our entertainment over, we walked out of the library together while Katie was distracted by another patron. As I walked to my car, though, I couldn't help but think that a weekend where Katie Matlin got laid and I didn't was not a good weekend at all.

%%%%%%%%%%%

T.S. Eliot apparently wrote somewhere that April is the cruelest month. Maybe he went away every February. Because as far as I'm concerned, April has nothing on February. February is still cold, it's still dark, and it has that damn Valentine's Day in the middle of it.

My own February hadn't really been that bad, particularly since it followed a January where I had come a little too close to being thrown out of school. I had made a friend with benefits, even if we'd only had benefits once so far. And even if we didn't really have one of those Valentine's Day relationships. I had made a bunch of other new friends, too. And I was on track for A-pluses in Government, History, and my Honors English Seminar.

Then, on February 27, I got my first Religion test back. Mrs. Kwan must have spent the entire weekend grading them, the old biddy. She gave me an A and yes, I know that an "A" is an excellent grade. It says so right on the report cards. A = Excellent. So I really couldn't complain about it. Besides, she'd written "Very nice job, Andrew" across the top of the test, and she smiled at me when she gave it back like I was a prize show dog that she was particularly proud of. But A+ = outstanding. And I needed outstanding grades to get into NYU. I had been right. I could have done better on that essay question.

The day hadn't started off well, either. Imogen and I were about to get into our car for the trip to school when Mark Fitzgerald pulled his land ark into the driveway behind my car and honked his horn. We watched Maya come out of the door and climb into his car. Imogen and I traded glances and got into ours. And then we waited for Fitz to leave. And waited. And waited.

Finally, after five minutes, I left the car idling and walked over to Fitz's car. He had turned the radio up and closed the windows. He and his buddies, Owen Milligan and Bobby Beckonridge, who were sitting in the back seat, were just laughing at me as I tried to ask him to move. Maya was sitting in the front seat, and while she didn't join them in laughing, it didn't look like she was doing anything to help us. Finally, with about five minutes to go before the start of school, he backed out of the driveway and tore off down the road. Imogen and I followed at a more sedate pace, and were naturally a few minutes late by the time we got to school.

Mr. Smithson refused to let me into homeroom without a note from the office, and when I got there I found Imogen ahead of me, nearly in tears. We were the only people there other than Alli Bhandari, who was so busy typing that she hadn't noticed Imogen arrive. I hadn't had occasion to come by the office since we'd danced together, and I was very happy to see her wearing her hair loose now.

"Hey, gorgeous," I called out. "How 'bout some service over here?"

Her head snapped up, ready to take offense.

"Here's trouble," she grinned. "What can I do for the Torres family?"

"The Torres family got held up by a bunch of assholes on the way here," I told her, "and can't get into their homerooms without notes."

"What's this?" Archie Simpson came bustling out of his office. "What happened, Drew?"

"We just had a run-in with some guys who wanted us to be late," I said.

"Who?" he asked. He seemed a little eager, like he hadn't disciplined someone in a while and needed to pad his statistics.

"It was —" Imogen began.

"Mister Simpson," I interrupted her. "Do we look like we're the kind of people who'd squeal on our classmates?"

With a disappointed glance at Imogen, who probably did look like she was that kind of person, he agreed that no, we didn't.

"Anyway, it didn't happen on school property," I said. "But we still need notes to get into our homerooms, of which we only have about five minutes left."

As Archie was interrogating us, Alli had prepared the necessary paperwork, and we both hustled out of the office.

"Why didn't you tell him?" Imogen demanded as we were about to part ways.

"Do you really think that he wouldn't confront Fitz, and that Fitz wouldn't take it out on Maya?" I left her standing there, open-mouthed, as I hurried back to Mr. Smithson's classroom.

I passed Fitz's locker on my way to fourth-period Astronomy, and he was just leaning on it, smirking at me.

"Nice trip, Torres?"

"Yeah, thanks, Fitz," I said as I hustled past. "You know, next time you and Owen and Brian oughta try to finish your play date a little earlier so you can pick Maya up before school starts, huh?"

I'd said it loud enough that it got some giggles from the kids within earshot, and it earned me a righteous glare from Fitz. In retrospect, of course, it probably hadn't been the smartest thing to say.

And then Religion. I could tell that Bianca was delighted with the A that she showed me, and I did my best to share her enthusiasm as we dumped our books in our lockers and walked to the cafeteria. It would have been hard to explain why a fuck-up like me was all of a sudden getting bent out of shape because he got an A rather than an A-plus. Instead, I told her the conclusion of the Katie Matlin saga, and then had to tell the whole thing over again at lunch for everyone else's benefit.

After school, Tommy and I began our weightlifting program. It went well, and Tommy told me he wanted to come back every day. But Coach wanted us to start the first week doing every other day, so Tommy agreed to wait until Wednesday.

At dinner that evening, Imogen did something that I hadn't seen her do in a long time, even by my truncated measuring stick. She complained to Dad. She launched into a diatribe about our having been late to school, and put the blame squarely on Maya.

"Hey, I didn't do anything," Maya protested.

"It was your stupid boyfriend who just sat there in the driveway laughing at us," Imogen pointed out.

"I didn't tell him to do it," Maya argued petulantly.

"So why didn't he just drive you to school?" Dad asked Maya.

"I don't know," Maya said as she played with her food. "He said he wanted to..."

"To what?" Dad asked.

"To jerk Drew around a little," she said reluctantly.

"Why?" Dad pressed her.

"'Cause he says that Drew tried to break us up," she said, tears forming in her eyes.

"Hey, Dad," I interrupted.

He looked over at me.

"It's not a problem," I said. "I'll take care of it. I'll make sure Imogen gets to school on time."

He gave me a long look, and then looked at Imogen and Maya in turn.

"Good," he grunted. "Because it's not like I can stick around here to referee your little high school problems."

We all returned to our dinners, but after Imogen and I had finished the dishes, I knocked on Maya's door. It was ajar, and I could see her in there at her desk, her ear plugs in and her head nodding to something mellow on her iPod.

"What do you want?" she asked when she finally realized I was in the doorway looking at her. She dialed down the volume.

"Is it important to you that he thinks that I tried to break you up?" I asked her.

She made a show of taking out her earplugs and asking me to repeat myself. I did, even though I knew full well that she'd heard me the first time.

"Yeah," she said. "You did."

"No, I didn't," I said gently.

"Yeah," she glared at me. "You did. Can you just leave me alone, please?"

"Jilly, what's the —"

"Please, Drew?"

I went out later that evening and parked the car on the street. When Fitz came the next day, I just pulled out and left him fuming in the driveway. Even Fitz wasn't about to mess with us in the middle of traffic. And after that he apparently decided it wasn't worth the trouble any more.

Please review! Pretty please?


	19. Sail

_**"Sail, This is how I show my love, I made it in my mind because, Blame it on my A-D-D baby, This is how an angel dies, Blame it on my own sick pride, Blame it on my A-D-D baby, Sail"**_

**19**

On Wednesday morning, I got back my Melville paper, another "Very nice job, Andrew" printed across the top. Unlike my Religion test, this one came with an A-plus attached to it. Thank you, Ms. Dawes. On Wednesday afternoon, Adam and I met again in the weight room after school for some lifting. He said he was a little sore, but he eagerly agreed to meet me again on Friday. On Wednesday evening, Bianca scuttled those plans with a single phone call.

"My parents are going to a friend's house for the Sabbath," she said.

"You guys are gone like every other week," I grumbled.

"I didn't say I was going."

"You're not going with them?" I perked up.

"No. Interested in an after-school special?"

"You bet," I said. At least, I thought I was. It sounded a lot like sex. Either that or we were going to watch TV. Either way, it would be time well spent as long as Bianca was there.

"Good. I'm feeling really horny."

So it wasn't TV. There was a long pause, and I finally realized that I was expected to respond.

"Me, too," I said.

"Good," she repeated. "I was getting worried."

"About what?"

"That you might not have, you know, liked it," she said shyly.

"Are you serious? It was great. You were great. It was amazing."

"You're blabbering," she giggled.

"Exactly."

"Then why didn't you ask me again?"

Was that the rule?! I couldn't ask her out to dinner or to a movie, but I could say, 'hi, wanna get together and fuck this weekend?' Is that what this meant? Hell, why didn't everybody do this?

"Uh, I guess I'm just too new at this," I said. "I've only done the boyfriend-girlfriend thing before."

We talked a little longer, and finally signed off with "see ya." None of that messy "I love you" stuff for me and Bianca.

On Thursday, I had a tryout for the Devil Rays, the team that had the first selection in the upcoming baseball draft in June. The scout tried not to appear that interested in me, and kept reminding me about up some hotshot lefthander at Vanderbilt that they were giving a real hard look. I uncorked a couple of my best fastballs — Adam was getting more and more comfortable catching them — and told him that that was fine, I was looking at a bunch of colleges, too. Our little chat after the throwing session took up so much time that I never noticed Adam leaving. As a result, I forgot to tell him about the change in our Friday afternoon plans until I saw him in the hallway Friday morning.

He was very disappointed.

"But I'm going over to Bianca's house, man," I said quietly.

"Drew," he pleaded, "I really need to get some serious playing time this year. I've gotten a couple of feelers from some Division II schools because of those games I caught Johnny in last spring. My folks can't pay for my college tuition."

"All right, all right. Hey, I know, I have the key!"

"To what?"

"The weight room," I said. "We can go in there on Saturday morning and lift. How 'bout it, buddy? You get your lifting, I get my Bianca-time. Besides, I already told Coach you were my catcher this year."

"Seriously?" he asked, his eyes alight.

"Seriously," I nodded.

"What'd he say?"

"Actually, he said you better start lifting," I admitted.

"See?" he laughed. He punched me on the arm. The right arm, fortunately.

On Friday afternoon, I drove Imogen home, shoved her out of the car, and raced off to Bianca's. Maybe I was a little more polite than that. The car probably came to a complete halt before Imogen exited.

I rang the doorbell. My phone started ringing. Yeah, like I was gonna stop and take a call. I waited a minute and knocked, peering through the glass windows on the side of the door to see if I could catch a glimpse of Bianca inside.

I rang the doorbell again. My phone started ringing again. I finally understood. With a smile on my face, I pulled the phone out of my pocket and saw Bianca's number on the screen.

"Where are you?" I asked.

"Upstairs," she answered.

"Upstairs where?"

"Upstairs in my house."

"Well, why don't you come downstairs and let me in?"

"I should come downstairs to open the door when I'm naked and about to step into the shower?" she countered. "Why don't you just turn the handle and see if it's locked?"

I did. It wasn't. One of these days I would actually go up the stairs in the DeSousas' house one step at a time.

Bianca had her own bathroom off her bedroom, and she was waiting for me in the bathroom doorway. She was standing with her back to me, looking back over her shoulder at me. I tried to keep looking at her face, honest, but with those long legs, that tight little butt, and the way her blonde hair cascaded down around her shoulders, it was a battle that my good manners had no chance of winning.

"Coming?" she arched her eyebrows.

Not yet, fortunately, but I was damn close. She walked into the bathroom, out of my sight. I heard her start the water as I pushed my pants and my shorts and my socks off, hopping ever closer to the door. I heard the shower curtain being pulled back as I unbuttoned my shirt. By the time I added the shirt to the trail of clothing and entered the bathroom, the curtain was already closed again. It was a combination bath and shower, with more than enough room for two. I reached for the edge of the curtain farthest from the showerhead, and pulled it open enough to slide inside.

"Mmm," Bianca purred without looking at me. She had put her hands against the tiles on the front of the shower, and stood there with her legs spread, as if I was being invited to frisk her. Instead, I simply watched the water stream down her shoulder blades until it ran in glistening rivulets off of her incredible ass.

"Andrew," she hissed, her voice barely audible above the sound of the water striking her back, "put it in."

"Condom," I gasped.

Damn it! I'd left them in my pants.

"Andrew," she whined. "I've been on the pill for a month. Please put it in."

She reached down between her legs with one hand and used her fingers to slowly expose herself to me. Did women do this on purpose? Did they want us to come even before physical contact? Stepping up behind her as quickly as I could, I slid my hand around her waist, sliding it along her stomach, and then underneath her hand to feel the smooth, bare skin of her completely hairless—

"Oh my God," I cried, paralyzed by the thought that she'd shaved her pubic mound bare.

She laughed softly, and reached back between her legs to grab hold of my cock. Aiming it, she pushed herself backward, impaling herself on me as I just stood there and let her fuck me.

"Bianca," I cried out, shooting the product of three weeks of celibacy into her.

"Oh, Andrew," she murmured. I'd been in the shower for all of two and a half minutes when Bianca pulled herself off of me.

"That was cruel, wasn't it?" she said over her shoulder.

"God, Bianca, I'm so sorry," I said.

Her body was shaking and I grabbed her shoulders.

"You doof," she laughed in my face as I spun her around. "Not you. Me! I was cruel."

"You?" I said hesitantly. "But I only lasted —"

She put the fingers of her right hand to my lips.

"Exactly as long as I thought you would," she said.

Her other hand held a bar of soap and she quickly lathered both hands up and returned the soap to its dish.

"I've been getting myself ready for you since I got home from school," she said, applying her soapy hands to my cock and smiling up at me, "because I wanted to get this one over quickly. The water tends to wash away all the natural, um, lubricant. It was perfect. Sometimes I like to just feel you spurt, you know? Don't worry, I enjoyed it. Maybe not as much as you did, but I expect you'll make it up to me when I've got you cleaned up. Now, do you see anything you want to soap up?"

As much as I enjoyed having my cock lathered up, I did have more fun of rubbing the soap all over her breasts, and then all around her ass and pussy. By the time I was done, she was not only clean, but she was breathing harder as well. I was harder too, so we decided to move things back into her bedroom.

Actually, she decided that. My only decision was that this time was going to be all about Bianca. I didn't even climax a second time. I put her on the bed and sucked and licked my way around her thighs, drawing ever closer to her pussy. I stopped just short, and turned her gently onto her stomach. Then, parting her legs, I knelt behind her and gave her pubic area a long, slow massage. When I finally turned her over again onto her back, her eyes were nearly closed, her body trembling beneath me. I thrust slowly into her, watching her face, feeling her nipples, listening for her breaths. After she finally stiffened and trembled in what I hoped was an orgasm, I pulled out. I lay back, pulling her over on top of me, and stroked her back with my fingers as she lay on my shoulder.

She slept for a while, and woke up to find me watching her.

"Mom wanted me to make sure you aren't interested in converting," she said, drawing her fingers across my nipple as she lay propped on an elbow.

"Mom wanted?" I asked.

She blushed

"I hate not being your girlfriend," she said. "Will you do me a favor?"

"Sure," I said. "Anything."

"I don't think I could take knowing that you were with somebody else. So I'll be available to you whenever you want, okay? Just promise me that if I can't find a nice Jewish boy while I'm here, you won't start publicly dating some hot little shiksa."

"Okay," I said. "What's a —"

"Hush," she said. "It's my turn to be on top now."

I never did find out what that shiksa thing was, but if Bianca DeSousa was going to make me feel like this, I honestly didn't care if it was some sort of porn star. I left about nine o'clock, with an invitation to return the following evening, when her parents would be home to celebrate something called Purim.

%%%%%%%%%%%

My alarm went off the next morning at eight, and I dressed and drove to the school. I didn't see Adam's car in the parking lot, so I figured I'd wait for him in the weight room. I opened the locked door and was more than a little surprised to find three people in there before me: Mark Fitzgerald, Owen Milligan, and a small, pretty brunette whose scared eyes locked on mine as soon as I entered. Fitz and Owen had both tossed their shirts onto the weight benches. The girl was wearing a jean jacket on top of a T-shirt and jeans.

"Shit," Owen muttered as he looked at the floor.

"Torres, this don't concern you," Fitz said with a scowl.

"Thank God," I said. "What's your name, honey?"

She looked from Fitz to Owen and back to Mark, as if she needed permission. They just looked angry, so she finally returned her gaze to me.

"Tori Santos," she said.

Tori Santos, I thought. Tori Santos. Where the hell did I know that name from? I'd certainly never dated her; she was, like, Maya's age. And the only "T" in my girlfriend mnemonic, "Thank every joker eating mandarins and canned grapes," was a Terri MacGregor. I'd spent a good bit of time trying to figure out who all the girls were, mostly by looking at old yearbooks. Terri's picture had been in my tenth grade yearbook but not the one from eleventh grade, so I figured she must have transferred out. In any event, Tori wasn't a girlfriend.

Then I suddenly realized who she was. This was the girl who, according to Maya, had been watching me fuck her sister Manny. Manny Santos, the "mandarins" in my mnemonic, had actually been the hardest of my former girlfriends to find. She'd been a senior when I was a junior, and it had simply never occurred to me that I would have dated an older woman. Fucked them, sure. Apparently I did that all the time. But to have one of them actually date me, in public? That was a surprise. Particularly, as I discovered once I had found her picture in my eleventh grade yearbook, when the girl-slash-woman in question was a hot-looking brainy older cheerleader.

"You need a ride home, Tori Santos?" I asked.

"Torres, why don't you just give yourself a fucking ride home?" Fitz said.

Just then the door banged open behind me. I was unwilling to turn around and look, but Owen's disgusted "fuck" told me all I needed to know.

"Hey, Adam," I said as he came to stand beside me.

"Problem?" he asked.

"Not any more," I said.

"Tell you what, Tori Santos," I said. "When Adam and I are done lifting, how 'bout I give you a ride home?"

"Okay," she nodded vigorously.

"Good," I smiled. We stood there for a while, the five of us, until Fitz finally tired.

"Fuck this shit," he said to Owen as he reached for his shirt. "Let's go, Owen."

"Have a good day boys," Adam said to them as I watched Tori slump down onto one of the benches.

"Oh God," she was hyperventilating. "Oh God. Oh God."

She looked up at both of us, seconds away from crying.

"I just," she started. "I just..."

"Yeah, but nothing happened, honey," I said. "You're fine. But this is a weight room, so we only talk about manly things. You know anything about baseball?"

"I play jayvee softball," she offered.

"Good," I said. "Explain the infield fly rule to Adam here while we lift."

Neither one of them knew the first thing about the infield fly rule, but neither was willing to admit that to the other. By the time we were finished, the rule had metamorphosed into a strict injunction against an infielder catching a fly ball that should actually be played by an outfielder, upon penalty of the batter's being awarded an additional base. Listening to the two of them, I could barely stop laughing long enough to do any serious lifting. Adam was stoked, though, almost as if he was showing off. Maybe he was, come to think of it. Maybe I should have let him drive Tori home. Ah well, he could always ask her out. I burst out laughing again on my way home. Like that would ever happen.

I didn't see Maya the rest of the day. By evening I was caught up in Purim, which is apparently a holiday devoted to getting drunk. Sort of like Saturday for Episcopalians. It began at sunset, and I arrived a few minutes later, just after six. I was in my best suit and tie, a bouquet of flowers for Mrs. DeSousa in my hand. She answered the doorbell and reached up to grab my ears. As she pulled me down to kiss me, on the lips, it became apparent that Mrs. DeSousa had already started celebrating. She managed to put the flowers in water, though, after yelling up to Bianca that her friend was here. Bianca came thundering down the stairs to greet me, and before we could walk into the kitchen, she gave me a little primer. The first rule was that I shouldn't mention the Lord's name. Her parents were very strict about that. I could call Him Hashem. I nodded, repeating it several times. As for Purim, she said, the idea was to get so drunk that we couldn't tell some guy named Haman from some other guy named Mordecai.

"Are they here, too?" I asked.

"They're from the book of Esther," she giggled, whacking me on the arm.

"In the Old Testament?"

"In the Testament," she corrected me. "Now, hush, you're supposed to be a religious scholar."

Mrs. DeSousa tipsily explained the meaning of the holiday to me all over again, and I chimed in "from the book of Esther, right?" at the appropriate moment, leading to smiles all around.

And then I was presented with a glass of wine that would have gotten a small pony drunk. My attempt to remind Mrs. DeSousa that I was still underage, by slightly more than three years, was pooh-poohed instantly. She might have actually said, "oh, pooh-pooh," in fact. Or maybe it was "oh, pish-tush." My second attempt, where I invoked my having to drive home tonight amid all the drunken Purim revelers, was much more successful. Although Mrs. DeSousa was heard quietly grousing about the fact that the only drunken Purim revelers in the city lived in this particular house.

It was fun watching Bianca get tipsy, and Mr. and Mrs. DeSousa get drunk. I left shortly after dinner, vowing to take a quick look at the book of Esther that evening when I got home. It looked like a fine piece of writing, with your good guy, Mordecai, and your bad guy, Haman. But as an excuse for a party like that? I was pondering that thought when the phone in our kitchen rang. I hadn't gotten a call on that line since, well, since the ninth grade, so I was shocked to hear Imogen call out my name.

"For me?" I yelled downstairs.

"Yes," she yelled back.

We passed each other on the stairs.

"You stupid, fucking ass," she muttered.

I was looking back over my shoulder at Imogen, wondering what had gotten into her, and ran into the kitchen table.

"Hello?" I said absent-mindedly when I finally located the receiver.

"You stupid, fucking ass. Where the hell are you?"

"Hello?" I said again, buying time.

"You know perfectly well this is my night at the observatory," Clare said. "I knew you'd fuck this up."

"I'll be there in five minutes, Clare," I hung up the phone. The observatory was six miles away. I was there in four.

"Clare, honestly," I said as I walked in. "It's just been a bad day. I came across two of our classmates with a very scared tenth grade girl in the weight room this morning."

Her anger dissolved instantly.

"Seriously?" she said. "Who?"

"Well, I can't tell you that," I said. "But tell me, what do you think of Mark Fitzgerald?"

"He's an asshole," she said.

"And Owen Milligan?"

"He's another asshole," she answered.

"Got it," I nodded. She'd already set the telescope for the proper coordinates, so I simply got ready to take down her observations.

"One more question before we start."

"What?" she gave an exasperated sigh.

"Mark's an asshole, Owen's an asshole, and I'm an asshole," I said. "Any distinctions in there at all for me to hold on to?"

She gave me a long look, and I finally got a Clare Edwards smile. What I didn't get was an answer.

Instead, she handed me a copy of the picture that Mr. Betenkamp had taken of her star. She had marked it off with a grid, A through J along the side, 1 through 10 on top, like it was some sort of road map.

"What are you, some sort of frickin' scientist or something?" I asked.

"Yes," she stared at me. "I am."

Oh, right.

We were at the observatory until just before midnight. Clare spent most of it bent over looking through the eyepiece of the telescope, so in addition to a Clare Edwards smile, I also got to see some nice Clare Edwards butt.

I thought about the asshole issue again the next morning in church, as I watched a sleepy Clare Edwards join my sister in the front pew. We didn't go in much for the book of Esther in the Episcopal Church. But if there was a line to be drawn among the various assholes of the world, I was hoping to be on the Mordecai side rather than the Haman side.


	20. Release

_**"I'm kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air, so there, So all the cups got broke shards beneath our feet but it wasn't my fault, And everyone's competing for a love they won't receive, 'Cause what this palace wants is release" ~Lorde**_

**20**

"So what should we do for Drew's half-birthday?" Imogen cheerily asked the usual group sitting at our table at lunchtime on Monday.

"My what?" I asked.

"Drew's birthday?" Bianca asked in a quiet tone of voice that nonetheless commanded the attention of the entire table. Her look was directed not at Imogen, though, but at me. I gave Imogen my most baleful stare.

"His half-birthday" Imogen corrected her. "He found out two years ago that he shares a birthday with Becky Baker, so he started making us celebrate his half-birthday."

"I do not," I protested.

"Hah!" Clare said. "Last year I heard you had the frickin' baseball team carry you around the cafeteria in a chair."

I blinked at her.

"Seriously?" I asked, looking at Eli and Adam.

"Not us," Eli said. "It was Derek and Johnny and Damian, I think."

"Bruce," Adam was very helpful. "Derek and Johnny and Bruce."

I looked at Imogen.

"Don't look at me," she held up her hands. "Clare and I had fifth period lunch last year."

I gave Bianca a mystified look, noticing only how tightly her lips were stretched across her mouth.

"Excuse me," she said, standing up abruptly.

"Excuse me," I said as I watched her put her tray away and leave the cafeteria. "Imogen, can you...?"

"I'll get your tray," she said. "Just go. You are such an ass."

I caught up to her in the hallway.

"Bianca," I grabbed her arm.

"Let go of me, Drew Torres," she yanked it away, her eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to hide her tears. "Well thank you very much. That was just about the most embarrassing day of my life. Everybody knows it's your day except for me?"

"Bianca, can we sit down and talk? Please?"

She reluctantly let me lead her into an empty classroom.

"Look, I'm sorry," I began. "I just forgot."

"Forgot that your birthday was six months ago?" she said coldly.

"Well, no," I agreed. "I forgot that, um, that..."

"That you like celebrating your half-birthday?"

"Yes," I said. That was exactly it. Although, in light of the story about last year's half-birthday, that was probably going to be a bit of a hard sell. I looked at Bianca, my best friend, and took a deep breath.

"Okay, I need to be honest with you," I said quickly, trying to commit myself to finishing. "And I know it's going to sound a little weird."

"You haven't been honest with me?" her voice had lost none of its edge.

I found that I was squeezing my hands in my lap, and stopped only with an effort.

"I haven't been honest with anyone. Not you, not Imogen, not Maya, not my Dad, nobody."

She waited for me to continue.

"The last birthday I can remember celebrating was in eighth grade," I said. "I turned 14 that year, and we had a cake and I got some presents, and it wasn't really that big a deal. It just wasn't. So my half-birthday means pretty much nothing to me."

Her eyes narrowed as she watched me.

"I'm sure I had birthdays in ninth grade and tenth grade and eleventh grade," I said. "Just like I'm sure I was just as big an asshole as Clare says I was."

"Everybody says you were," Bianca pointed out.

"Whatever," I agreed. "But it wasn't me. I went to sleep on Christmas Eve, 2010, and I woke up two months ago, on Christmas, December 25, 2013. It's like I just skipped three years of my life. Somebody lived them, but it wasn't me."

Bianca cocked her head, no doubt torn between wanting to believe me and wanting to run away from the lunatic she was alone with. It was at that point that I elected to leave out the part about Santa Claus. That wasn't likely to tilt her decision in my favor.

"So like you lost your memory?" she asked.

That wasn't really it, of course. I just hadn't lived those three years. But it was a lifeline, however slender, and I was a drowning man.

"Yeah," I nodded.

"This sounds like a lot of bullshit," she declared. "Did you go to a doctor or something?"

I thought about that a minute. That would have been a fun visit. See, Doc, what happened was I ran into Santa Claus, see, and...

I decided not to answer her directly.

"If you had heard that you lived the last three years that I did, would you want them back? I swear, Bianca, I can't remember anything between 2010 and 2013. Like being carried around the cafeteria. It sounds like something I would do. Or really, more like something I would have done last year. But I have absolutely no memory of it. I was a colossal asshole for three years, but to me, the me that's here with you, it never happened."

"You know," I tried lightening the mood a little, "as far as I know, I was a virgin at the beginning of the year."

"Oh, that's stupid," Bianca said heatedly. "You had like a dozen girlfriends."

I looked at her and she blushed. It pleased me, in an odd way, that she'd made some sort of effort to find that out.

"I know," I nodded, saddened once again by what had happened to me, and by what was happening now. "And the only one I can remember is Clare Edwards, who was my very first kiss, on the day before Christmas Eve in 2010. And who I apparently treated like dirt after that. But I can't remember that part.

"You know," I wiped the back of my hand across my own suddenly wet eyes, "my mom died a year and a half ago, and I can't remember anything about that either."

Bianca stared at me and then pulled me into her chest.

"Oh, Andrew," she breathed. "Andrew."

I was being a baby. No, I was being a fourteen-year-old. In an eighteen-year-old body. With an eighteen-year-old friend waiting for me to, well, grow up. I pulled myself erect, another round of tears just waiting to flow.

"Bianca, you're the only friend I have," I said with as manly a whimper as I could muster. "Because you're the only one who sees me the way I see myself, without the last three years fucking everything up."

She took a deep breath and exhaled.

"So I'm sorry I didn't tell you about my half-birthday," I said. "It really never was that big a deal to me before I lost those years. I mean, in my mind. I understand now how important it was to you not to be surprised by it, and I'm sorry. Please, Bianca, I —"

She cut me off.

"I still don't know if I believe this whole thing," she said as her eyes started to tear up. "I admit it explains a lot of stuff, but it's kind of freaky, you know? But you're my friend, too. So when is it?"

"When is what?" I sniffled.

"Your half-birthday, jerk."

"Um, tomorrow, I guess. But I —"

She pulled me close and we hugged, cheek against cheek, the most intimate moment that the two of us had shared. Finally, I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket and we cleaned each other's tears up. When she pronounced me acceptable, and I pronounced her gorgeous, we headed back to the cafeteria.

"So about Drew's half-birthday," she said as we reclaimed our seats. "He doesn't want the chair thing this year. What should we do instead?"

We decided on dinner at Red Lobster, and in a few minutes, Eli, Adam and I were just so much surplus baggage. Rides were planned, reservations were made, cake was ordered, and we guys just sat there, nodding and grinning. The bell for the next period went off just as we were about to learn what outfits we were supposed to wear. I assumed that information would be e-mailed to us tonight.

Monday was also the day that baseball practice was scheduled to begin, so Adam and I did our lifting during our free seventh periods.

Practice didn't inspire a lot of confidence. At this point, though, that didn't worry me. With the exception of pitchers and catchers, all of the regular position players from last year's team were told not to show up until Thursday. So these were just the wanna-bes. Coach apparently intended to use the first three days to help the pitchers get ready for the season and see what kind of new talent he was going to get.

My snap judgment was that he wasn't going to get much. Owen Milligan showed up to try out for catcher, and was doing fairly well. I probably didn't help by glaring at him every chance I got. As far as pitchers went, the only real possibility was an eleventh-grader, Zig Novak, who had a wicked-looking curveball. At one point during a break, I sat down next to him asked him to show me how to hold it.

"You want to know how to throw my curve ball?" he asked, his eyes wide.

"Well, a curve ball. Yours looks pretty good."

"But you're Drew Torres."

"So?"

"You're like, going pro next year," he stammered.

"Look, um, Zig, right?"

"Yeah," he grinned.

"Zig, we might be teammates this year, right?"

"I hope so," he said eagerly.

"So look, if we're gonna be teammates, that means you gotta stop lookin' at me like I'm some kind of fucking baseball god, okay?"

"But, uh, Winston Chu said that you," he started, "that you, uh..."

His voice trailed off, and I suddenly realized where we were going with this.

"Winston Chu told you to give me a pretty wide berth, huh?"

He stared at me, afraid now that he'd gotten Winston Chu, whoever the hell he was, in some kind of trouble.

"Look, Zig. Last year Winston would've been right. This year, though, the team needs all the help it can get. Look at some of those guys out there."

We watched an eager shortstop prospect let the ball go right between his legs.

"You, me, Eli Goldsworthy, Mo Mashkour, Adam over there," I nodded. "All of us, we gotta be a team this year if we're gonna win. I got a good fastball and a good change. If you want help with either of those, ask me. But I don't have a curve."

He gave me a hesitant smile and showed me how he held his curve. A few minutes later, I tried it out. It bounced about two feet in front of home plate and it ricocheted up into Adam's crotch, leaving him gasping on the ground. Obviously that was a pitch that was going to need some more work.

That was pretty much the highlight of the week, for me if not for Adam. On Tuesday morning, Mr. Oleander handed me a note indicating that I was wanted in the office. I breezed in and gave Alli Bhandari a big hello. She gave me a tight grin and asked me to take a seat.

"It's my half-birthday, Ms. Bhandari," I said, somewhat taken aback by her reaction.

"Happy half-birthday, Mr. Torres," she said soberly. "Please sit down."

I sat down on the bench, bummed that from the bench I couldn't see the very attractive outfit that I'd noticed Alli wearing when I walked in. It wasn't until I heard my name called, that I knew I was in real trouble.

"Andrew."

I looked up to see Snake standing in the doorway, looking very serious.

"Come on in," he said.

He closed the door behind me as I walked into his office. An older guy in a suit was sitting in one of his chairs, a briefcase beside him.

"Andrew, this is Craig Manning of the College Board," Snake said. "He has some questions for you. It concerns, uh —"

"Perhaps you could just let me ask a few questions first, Mr. Simpson," Mr. Manning interrupted him in a nasal tone.

"Certainly," Snake ushered me to a seat.

"Mr. Torres," my interrogation began, "you recently took the Scholastic Aptitude Test, did you not?"

It took me a moment.

"The SAT?" I asked. "Yeah, in, like, January."

"On January 27th?" he asked.

"That sounds right," I answered slowly.

"Can you describe the circumstances of that testing?"

"The what?" I asked him. "The circumstances? What's going on?"

"Where did you take the test?"

"Room 112," I answered.

"With how many other students?"

"Twenty?" I guessed. Most of my classmates had taken the test in the fall.

"Do you remember any of them?"

"I'm sure the school has a list," I suggested helplessly.

"I'm sure they do," he said. "Do you remember any?"

"God, let me think."

It shouldn't be that hard. They were mostly a bunch of fuckups like me.

"Owen Milligan," I suddenly remembered. "And those other guys, um, Bobby Beckonridge and Damon, uh, Cutting. Oh, and Talia Valenziano."

Talia had been "sick" last semester. Right now her mother was taking care of her eight-pound "illness."

"And the proctor?" he asked.

"Um, ya got me there," I said. "I don't know his name."

"Mr. Shostack," Snake chimed in, earning a glare from Mr. Manning.

"He's the assistant coach of the football team," Snake explained.

"Will you please tell me what this is about?" I repeated.

"Have you tried to access your score on our website?"

"No," I said. "I didn't know you could."

"Most people can," he continued. "Most people would have received notification by today in the mail. Your score is embargoed, Mr. Torres."

"Meaning what?" I asked.

"Meaning it will not be released to any colleges until we are satisfied that it is a true and accurate representation of your potential academic abilities."

I looked over at Snake, who was studying his shoes. He finally looked up at me.

"They think you cheated, Andrew," he mumbled.

"They what?" I gasped.

"Mr. Torres," Mr. Manning broke in, "your score went from a combined 790 to a figure just over twice that. Can you explain how that happened?"

"Well," I paused. "I didn't leave early this time."

"Did you study?" he asked.

"Yes. Well, a little."

"And you took the test at a time when you were facing a disciplinary hearing here at school, did you not?"

I glared at Snake. So much for expunging.

"Yes, sir," I said.

"And you expect me to believe that in the middle of that, you were able to double your score without any serious preparation?"

"I didn't cheat," I said. "Sir."

"Perhaps not," he gave me a tight smile. "I will talk to Mr. Adams. I will talk to these other students who were there."

My jaw dropped open.

"Don't worry, Mr. Torres," he said. "This is a confidential investigation. Nobody will know why I am asking these questions."

The bell rang, and I stayed rooted to my chair.

"You'd better get to class, Andrew," Snake said gently.

"Yes, sir," I murmured. I arrived late, but Mr. Townsend took one look at my hapless expression and silently let me in anyway.

By the end of the day, news of the "confidential investigation" was sweeping through the halls of the school. Baseball practice was a particularly desultory affair, with Owen Milligan giving me a smug grin and the newcomers treading very softly around me, either because of my old reputation as an asshole or my new reputation as a cheater. Only Adam was in my corner, telling me that he was sure that I'd be cleared by the end of the week.

That was the consensus at my so-called party as well. I wasn't convinced.

"They're going to question Owen Milligan, Bobby Beckonridge, and Damon Cutting," I pointed out. "And you know how much the football team likes me these days. You really think they won't find a way to suggest that well, maybe he did have a little piece of paper fall to the ground?"

"There aren't any pieces of paper that can help you on the SAT," Bianca pointed out.

I glumly shrugged my shoulders, and then Adam came up with the answer.

"Take it again," he said.

"Again?" I'm sure I sounded just as astonished at that suggestion as I was.

"Again," he nodded. "They offer it again on Saturday. You get in that guy's face tomorrow morning and tell him you'll take it this Saturday in a room with only you and four teachers. Any teachers he wants. And you tell him that if you do worse than you did on the January test, he can keep your fucking score embargoed as long as he wants."

"Say what?" I asked.

"And if you do better," Adam pressed on with considerably more energy than I had at that point, "then you get the new score and a public apology."

He sat back in triumph.

"I busted my butt taking that test last time," I pointed out.

"But you didn't study," Imogen said.

"Well, no, not much," I agreed.

"There are three nights left," Adam said. "On Wednesday you cram for the Reading with me. On Thursday you cram for the Math with, um..."

He looked at Clare and then quickly looked away at the other faces around the table.

"I'll do it," Clare said quietly.

Adam nodded.

"And on Friday you do the Writing part with me again," he finished.

"I'll do that one," Bianca said.

Adam looked a little offended.

"I got an 800," Bianca said.

"Like I said, you do that part with Bianca," Adam concluded to general laughter. "I will goddamn guarantee you a higher score than whatever you got last time."

I took a deep breath.

"All right," I said, "but you goddamn better be right, Adam Narburg."

By the time Saturday morning came around, I was wiped. If I was going to get a higher score this time, it was going to be purely because of what Adam, Clare, and Bianca had shoehorned into my tiny little brain the previous three nights.

I had made the offer in Mr. Simpson's office on Wednesday morning. Mr. Manning spouted some drivel about my not being pre-registered, but ultimately found himself unable to refuse. As Snake pointed out, it was just too darn reasonable.

And by Wednesday afternoon, the news of my little deal with the College Board had started to leak out. Owen's expression at practice that afternoon was much darker. After we were finished, Adam came over to my house, endured Maya's gibes about geeky baseball players, and drilled me on reading comprehension.

By the time baseball practice started on Thursday afternoon, the first day of full-team practice, the whole school knew. In two days, I had gone from being a presumptive cheater to being the hero of the downtrodden. If I was guilty, the thinking went, I obviously wouldn't be taking a chance like this. This was apparently the Drew Torres that everybody liked. The gambler. The guy who would throw his fastball right down the middle of the plate even though everybody, including the guy with the bat, knew that it was coming. I was high-fived throughout practice. A group of cheerleaders stopped by to wish me well on the way from their practice to the showers. Two or three jokingly invited me to come along with them. I flirted with them for a while, and then hit the showers. The ones in the boys' locker room. I left that evening almost glowing with self-confidence. Yeah, I agreed, those College Board wussies were going down.

Clare was waiting for me out there, and I was suddenly ashamed of myself. Turning into an asshole was easier than I thought. I tried to thank her for her time as humbly as I could, and she smiled and said she hoped it worked. When Maya saw her sitting on the couch with me that evening, going over one math question after another, she just stopped and stared at us.

Friday was pretty much a repeat of Thursday, with three exceptions. First, we found out that our mid-term exam in Government would be the following week. Second, we were assigned a History paper on the Civil War, due in two weeks. And third, and best of all, it was Bianca who was waiting for me when I came out of the locker room after baseball practice. Imogen had already taken our car home, so Bianca drove us there. Before dinner, I eagerly introduced her to my Dad, my stepmother, my brother Jay, and my sister Maya. She bowled over every single one of them. And then she sat down with me and taught me writing. Fortunately, I was already fairly good at writing, as she cheerfully acknowledged. In fact, it was around nine o'clock when she apparently concluded that there wasn't anything more she could teach me.

That was also when she noticed that the house had emptied out. Dad and Paige were at the bowling alley. This was a relatively recent development. Dad didn't particularly like to bowl, but Paige, looking much like a bowling ball herself, had developed a craving for the bowling alley's pizza. So now they went there every Friday night. Dad bowled a few games, Paige ate a few pizzas.

Jay left for his night shift at the 7-Eleven at about seven-thirty, although not until after Bianca had told him that he ought to be taking some courses at the community college to get a start on getting his degree. During dinner, she had gotten Jay to tell her about his first semester at Auburn, the one that he had completed before he had blown out his knee in a bowl game shortly before Christmas in 2011 Jay just sat there and nodded as Bianca explained the advantages of attending a community college before transferring to a four-year school. There was no excuse for not taking advantage of college in this day and age, she claimed. When he left that evening, in fact, she sweetly asked him if he was going to follow through on his commitment. He just sort of nodded and scurried out the door.

The girls were on dates, of course. Fiona had knocked on the door at seven-thirty to take Imogen to dinner and a late movie. Fitz had leaned on the horn shortly before eight, to take Maya to God knows where.

Bianca certainly didn't know where, and she didn't care.

"Are you sure I'm ready for this?" I asked with no little surprise as I saw Bianca start packing up the book bag she'd brought with her. It did seem awfully early to me. Adam and Clare had both been here until nearly eleven.

"Ready for what?" she zipped up her bag and lowered her voice as she reached for the zipper of my jeans.

"The test?" I yelped, scooting back on the couch and casting a worried look at the door.

"The test?" she repeated with a gay laugh. "Andrew Torres, if you don't come out of the Writing portion of that test thinking that you have absolutely aced it, I will..."

"Will what?" I asked when she didn't finish the sentence.

"Drop to my knees on the steps of the school and blow you right there when you walk out," she concluded with a laugh.

That was good enough for me. I still was worried about someone coming in the front door, though, and glanced in that direction. She saw my look and smiled.

"Come on, Drew" she said in a seductive voice. "Haven't you ever done it when someone could walk in on you?"

"Let's see," I said. "Your parents were out to lunch, and then they were away on a trip. So no, I haven't."

And of course the library doors had been locked.

Bianca's eyes softened as she remembered what I'd told her about my own memory.

"God, I'm sorry, Drew," she said.

"Although," I said, my eyes twinkling, "when I kissed Clare that night I told you about, there was always the chance that Imogen could walk back in with the hot chocolate."

"You bastard," she whacked me on the shoulder.

"'Course, Imogen wanted us to kiss anyway," I recalled.

"Did she really?" Bianca sat back on the couch. "Why?"

"I don't know. She probably thought hey, my big brother, my best friend, who better to get together?"

"It would have been good," Bianca agreed after a pause that lasted long enough for her to imagine the Edwards-Torres couple well into old age.

"I guess," I shrugged. "Too bad I fucked it up, huh?"

"Too bad for Clare," she leaned in again. "Not so bad for Bianca, though, huh?"

"Not so bad for Andrew either," I smiled at her as she reached for my zipper a second time. "How 'bout we go upstairs, though?"

"Chicken," Bianca laughed as she bolted from the couch and ran up the stairs.

"First one on the right!" I yelled after her as I followed.

She refused to have sex with me that evening, but she gave me a blowjob that left me gasping for breath. With me sitting on the edge of my bed and her kneeling between my legs, fully clothed, she applied her tongue to everything: my thighs, my balls, the base of my cock, the tip of my cock, everything. And then she started to suck. I remember, the first time she blew me, not liking it that much. I had explained to her why I hadn't liked it, communication being one of the easiest part of the whole "friends with benefits" thing. And she had done a much better job a few weeks later, after our little shower. This time was simply amazing. If she got a chance to practice on me any more, I'd be dead.


End file.
